Chinese animation

Chinese animation (simplified Chinese: 中国动画; traditional Chinese: 中國動畫; pinyin: Zhōngguó dònghuà) or Donghua, in a narrow sense, refers to animation made in China.

In the first century BC, the Chinese craftsman Ding Huan (丁緩) invented a device "on which many strange birds and mysterious animals were attached" that were said to have "moved quite naturally", but it is unclear if this and the other devices historian Joseph Needham calls "a variety of zoetrope" involved any true illusion of animation or simply featured static or mechanized figures actually moving through space.

Modern animation in China began in 1918 when an animation piece from the United States titled Out of the Inkwell landed in Shanghai. Cartoon clips were first used in advertisements for domestic products. Though the animation industry did not begin until the arrival of the Wan brothers in 1926. The Wan brothers produced the first Chinese animated film with sound, The Camel's Dance, in 1935. The first animated film of notable length was Princess Iron Fan in 1941. Princess Iron Fan was the first animated feature film in Asia and it had great impact on wartime Japanese Momotaro animated feature films and later on Osamu Tezuka. China was relatively on pace with the rest of the world up to the mid-1960s, with the Wan's brothers Havoc in Heaven earning numerous international awards.

China's golden age of animation would come to an end following the onset of the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Many animators were forced to quit. If not for harsh economic conditions, the mistreatment of the Red Guards would threaten their work. The surviving animations would lean closer to propaganda. By the 1980s, Japan would emerge as the animation powerhouse of the Far East, leaving China's industry far behind in reputation and productivity. Though two major changes would occur in the 1990s, igniting some of the biggest changes since the exploration periods. The first is a political change. The implementation of a socialist market economy would push out traditional planned economy systems. No longer would a single entity limit the industry's output and income. The second is a technological change with the arrival of the Internet. New opportunities would emerge from flash animations and the contents became more open. Today China is drastically reinventing itself in the animation industry with greater influences from Hong Kong and Taiwan.

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Wikipedia