Once considered kid's toy and rebellious teenagers' heartthrob, cartoons and graphic novels suddenly hit China's mainstream culture as the country realized creativity is profitable.

In a large hall of the National Art Museum of China, the country's top gallery for fine art, the poster of a cartoon goat, very popular on TV this year, is put on show.

Downstair, there displays oil paintings of China's realistic artists, including a portrait of a young girl in Mao's suit, wearing a badge of Chairman Mao Zedong on her chest.

Visitors to the exhibition of animation and manga on the third and fifth floors included Li Changchun, senior state leader in charge of publicity and culture. He watched the exhibition on Nov.5.

Gan Yujie, 60, who frequented the museum almost every week, told Xinhua that she never imagined the graphic novels like "Romance of the three Kingdoms" could make it to the halls of the national art museum.

"I was excited to see the works there," said professor Liao Xiangzhong, dean of the Animation School of Communication University of China.

"The exhibition in such a museum means that animation and comic arts have been recognized by the government as 'real' arts," he said.

Organized by such ministries and organizations as Ministry of Culture(MOC), Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Science and Technology, the show covers a wide range of categories in the field of animation and cartoon, including animation films, animation TV series, Iconic cartoons, comic books, mobile cartoons.

Chinese animation germinated in the 1920s and the first animated feature film "Tie Shan Gongzhu," or "Princess Iron Fan" screened in 1941.

Cai Wu, minister of culture, said Chinese animation and comic arts were attracting more attention than ever in the country with unprecedented opportunities ahead.

"After so many years of accumulation, Chinese animation has been fully fledged for a take-off," said Liao.

He owed the growth to the governmental support and dissemination work.

He said Chinese government had been fully aware of the value of creative works of traditional culture and is trying to find a more effective way to communicate those values to its young people.

"We should look at the animation industry in a new way," said Ouyang Jian, vice minister of culture. "It's an industry which can bring happiness and dreams to people, especially for the adolescent."

Wang Jingtian, 19, an animation major with a vocational school in Beijing, said he had the feeling that his job prospects becomes brighter.

He is also a cartoon fan and used to read manga in primary school parks between classes in order not to get caught by the teachers.

China currently has about 10,000 companies making cartoons and comics, with more than 200,000 people employed, according to the MOC.

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

The exception was "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf", a 6-million-yuan (about 878,000 U.S. dollars) production telling the story of several goats fighting their enemy, Big Big Wolf, who covets fresh mutton for his family.

The film pocketed 8 million yuan on its opening day on Jan. 16 and some 80 million yuan within three weeks, becoming the new champion of the animated box office. The previous one was "Storm Rider: Clash of Evils", an adaptation of the popular Hong Kong comic in 2008. It earned 25 million yuan in two 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 Chinese government has made an annual investment of 200 million yuan into the cartoon industry since 2006 to boost original animation creation and development of domestic companies.

"Our company has witnessed increasing sales and wider market in recent years," said Xiong Jian, an officer with the Talkweb Information System Co. LTD.

Founded in 1996, when it only had about 10 people, the company had developed in to a share-issuing company employing more than 1,000 workers. The company is pioneering in animation works in mobile phones.

The company has made some 1,000 collection serials to shape mobile cartoon stars by their products transmitted by mobile phone.

The company's revenue from mobile cartoon business in the first half of this year hit 30 million yuan. The figure for the last year is about 47 million.

Despite the achievements, people are still not satisfied with the quality of Chinese animation works.

Zheng Lili, an animation enthusiast, said home-made cartoons films still could not match the Japanese ones in storytelling.

She said, "We don't have the animated cartoon which entertain everyone, whether it is child or adult."

But professor Liao was optimistic about the future of Chinese animation.

"Outstanding work entails outstanding studio which is still developing here," he said, "It takes time."

Source: Xinhua