Anime has been outsourced to foreign subcontracting studios for decades.
Before China, I’ve known that studios from Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam taking work for Japanese productions.
I’ve even met a studio head at an anime convention in the States.
The only difference is that the Chinese want to develop their own animation industry.
But the Chinese Communist Party’s restrictions on artistic expression and creativity should limit the appeal of anything that comes out of there, similar to how their live action movie industry is faring internationally.
I’m not sure why the Korean animation industry has never taken off.
Probably due to lack of local market desire. We know the Chinese consumer wants anime like content from the likes of mihoyo and stuff but the regulations there make it not very appealing to market that kind of stuff over there.
I too “discriminate against” Chinese animation, and the illustration at the top of this article is a fine example of why - because it all looks the same. It’s like there’s exactly and only one Chinese animation art style, and it’s just regurgitated over and over and over again.
When I go to an anime site without something specific in mind and just browse for something to watch, I narrow my search by, among other things, specifying Japan as the country of origin, and toggling off all Chinese productions, just because I have zero interest in them.
Now granted - this article seems to be focused more on Chinese animators being subcontracted to Japanese productions, as opposed to Chinese productions, but I wouldn’t be the least surprised if the heart of the problem is that Japanese studios believe, and with considerable evidence to support it, that Chinese animators are unable to do anything other than that one endlessly repeated art style - that if they want their art style to be anything other than that one distinctive and endlessly repeated style that the Chinese use, they have to use Japanese staff.
Certainly I have no idea if that’s actually the case, but that was my immediate reaction - if I ran a Japanese animation studio, I would think that I would be generally unwilling to hire Chinese animators, specifically because I’d expect that they’d be unable to do anything other than that one and only, endlessly repeated art style.
Plus all the racism.
