The film festival in Shanghai took a break from the "real" world. Three days into the event, the focus turned to animation. With the growing popularity and huge market potential, more attention fell on China's animation industry at Tuesday's forum.

Animation companies from both home and abroad including industry leaders like Disney and Sony came together in Tuesday's forum. With about 290 million young people under the age of 14, China is considered the world's largest animation market and will likely remain so during the next twenty years.

Rui Murong, general manager of Southeast Asian Zone of Disney said, "In my speech, it is a very promising industry. Even for Disney, it's something that we work very hard to be able to do very well. "

Strong rivals from abroad haven't shaken the confidence of local animators. In fact, it has made homegrown companies work even harder. One of them is Shanghai Media & Entertainment Group who took 11 animations to the festival.

Chen Wen, market director of Shanghai Culture & Broadcast Company, said, "We believe that the Chinese audience is more interested in local stories that are close to them. In that respect, we have an edge over our foreign competitors. We try to communicate and co-operate with our outside counterparts in order to share ideas and learn something new."

Local animators not only do contemporary stories, but also household folk stories and stories from China's thousand-year-long history, such as The Monkey King adapted from the classical novel  A Journey to West , and The Q version of the Three Kingdoms. Following the hype, Shanghai will launch a new animation channel at the end of this year.

(CCTV.com June 9, 2004)