As things turned out, we ended up producing our project at a start-up studio located in Guangzhou (Canton). The studio was a joint venture between Shanghai Animation which supplied the artists, The Pearl River film company which supplied the facility and a Hong Kong partner who supplied the money.

In the ensuing fourteen months I experienced more ups and downs than I can recount. The majority of artists were young and away from home for the first time, while trying to learn new techniques and meet a set of requirements with which they were not familiar. Looking back now at that experience, I am surprised that we were able to accomplish what we did. The film was finished after much delay and sold to The Disney Channel, BBC and a number of other distributors. Sadly, the effort all but destroyed the studio. The operation was a success but the patient died. After the completion of the film the Hong Kong partner withdrew its financial support, citing heavy losses on the project. The remaining Chinese partners then asked if we wished to take the place of the departed Hong Kong partner in the joint venture. After giving due consideration to this offer, we decided that we would be better served to start fresh and build a new studio from the ground up.

In late 1987 Pacific Rim Animation received a license to open for business within the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone. Obtaining the license as a wholly owned foreign company was another story unto itself. To this day I am not absolutely sure how we did it, but I do know that the process rivaled any grand opera in the machinations that were undertaken to accomplish it. To my knowledge this was the first, and to this day, the only license granted to any company in the film business to operate in China without a local partner.

In the following seven years Pacific Rim Animation produced over 500 half-hour animated shows, worked on three feature films and several television/video special projects. At one point the studio employed nearly eight hundred people and was the largest studio in China. I believe the company played a seminal role in the development of the animation industry in China; although those who followed probably learned more from my mistakes than they did from anything else. Within three years a number of joint venture studios began to appear on the scene and the growth of animation production in China was well underway.

The Current Status
Today the animation industry is well established in China. Five or six large studios dominate, but there are perhaps as many as 80 small studios spread throughout the mainland. Many of these are subsidiaries of broadcast groups or other media companies. The industry has more or less centered itself in and around Shanghai with studios spread widely over a several hundred mile radius of the city. In the small town of Suzhou there are two of the largest studios, Wang Films Shouzhou and Hong Ying (Red Eagle), plus a number of small office branch studios of other companies. Both Wang Films and Hong Ying are Taiwanese and have auxiliary studios in Shanghai, as well as operations outside of China. Wang Films, possibly the most established of all Asian studios, operates in Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia as well as China. Shanghai itself has a number of studios including the patriarch Shanghai Animation and Shanghai Morning Sun, another Taiwanese venture. Shanghai Animation has now opened an auxiliary studio created to compete for overseas production. Hong Kong Animation Services is yet another producer of animation in the area and employs a group of satellite studios set up in cities surrounding Shanghai. In the southern city of Shenzhen, the industry is still very well represented by two other large studios, Jade Animation and Colorland Animation. Both of these companies are Hong Kong joint ventures and compete with several smaller studios which are either state supported (Oriental Hong Ye - CCTV) or Japanese operated satellite operations (Rising Sun Animation), working exclusively for parent studios in Japan.

The major change I see within the industry in China over the past fourteen years is the increase of talented artists, directors and production staff available to the studios. In the beginning, like any new industry, there wasn't any staff available who didn't require a good deal of training. The mediocre quality of work in those early years reflected more the animator's lack of experience than anything else. As in Taiwan, Korea, Japan and the Philippines before, Chinese animation has matured and grown with time. Studios have learned what their clients expect and have now had the time to both train and polish their staff so as to deliver what is expected. Management has also matured and technology has been embraced to help the studios produce large volumes of work within demanding time frames. Nearly all of the large studios offer digital ink and paint services which remedies many past problems caused by sub-standard film laboratories and poor camera equipment.