With a large and potentially profitable market, China is holding a nationwide contest to find outstanding cartoons and comics featuring its cultural heritages.

It's a move by the government to encourage creativity in its fledgling animated films industry.

Since Wednesday's launch, the China Cultural Heritage Comic Competition has received phone calls from about 10 cartoon companies and college students who want to participate, Xu Ziling, a media staffer with the organizing committee, told Xinhua on Friday.

Initiated and organized by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH), the contest will run six months and is open to "anyone able to paint, write or use a computer."

Because the fourth Chinese "Cultural Heritage Day" falls on Saturday, an annual domestic holiday, SACH focused the contest on animating history such as traditional medicine, characters and art.

China currently has up to 6,000 companies making cartoons and comics, with more than 200,000 people employed, the Ministry of Culture (MOC) said in March.

However, according to the MOC, about 85 percent of those companies are not yet profitable.

The exception was last year's "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf", a 6-million-yuan (about US$877,000) production telling the story of several goats fighting their enemy, Big Big Wolf, who covets fresh mutton for his family.

The film made 8 million yuan on its opening day and some 80 million yuan within three weeks.

Previously, only foreign-made animated films scored big at the Chinese box office.

For example, Hollywood's DreamWorks animated comedy Kungfu Panda took in 181 million yuan from Chinese mainland audiences in 2008.

The disparity is one that the SACH was trying to fill. Contest organizers were targeting college students in hope of finding talent for China's animation industry.

But Cartoon Weekly's editor-in-chief Zhong Luming told The Star Online on May 30th that it will take more than just talented people to make the industry more successful.

"What does China's cartoon and animation industry lack?" he asked. "Not policies, not money and not talents. We have as many cartoon creators and artists as government officials. But we do not have good business-minded managers and leaders like Wang Shi, Pan Shiyi, Jack Ma and Liu Yonghao."

They were the creators and marketers of "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf".

Of the 16 animated films China made last year, only the goat and wolf combination was a hit. One reason is that most people favor cartoons made in other countries.

A poll done by the China Youth Daily in November 2008 showed that only 14.2 percent of the nearly 3,000 people polled liked Chinese cartoons the most.

In contrast, about 62.4 percent of respondents said their favorite animated films were US-made. Another 45.9 percent favored films from Japan.

Chinese animations that don't make the big screen often end up being shown on TV. That's the medium that winners of the SACH contest will get access to.

Besides cash awards, their work will be broadcast on local TV stations across the country.

"We hope this contest will not only attract participants from different walks of life but can also change the way the public views the animated film industry," Xu Ziling said.

The first such cartoon contest took place in 2006 on the first "Cultural Heritage Day."

(Xinhua News Agency June 13, 2009)