The city of Tianjin recently saw several Chinese comic and animation professionals gather in its city for the top Chinese comic and animation awards on Dec 27, an official project to celebrate their remarkable feats created over the past five years.

The newly established national award ceremony is an important step in sending the Chinese comic and animation industry into a steep economic takeoff and tap top cultural products and intellectual resources, said Cai Wu, the Minister of Culture.

Since China replaced central planning with a market economy and opened up to the world, it has witnessed amazing growth and has become a rising newcomer on the world stage.

China produced 385 animations domestically in 2010, reaching a combined 220,350 minutes, reportedly overtaking Japan as the largest producer in the world. At the same time, its output value jumped to 48 billion yuan, a 27.8 percent rise from 2009.

In addition, 24 producers produced an annual output over 30 million yuan, 13 of which reached 100 million yuan by the end of 2009.

Among the medal winners on Dec 27 was Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf, a commercially successful Chinese animated television series. It has become a popularly accepted animation domestically. Its first movie, The Super Snail Adventure, was launched in January 2009 and raked in 30 million yuan during its opening weekend, a domestic box office record for a Chinese animated film.

Another recipient was Xia Da, or April, a Chinese animator who successfully serialized one of his works in Ultra Jump, one of Japan's most popular comic magazines.

But culturally, a top-quality product in China is still more of an exception than a rule.

Original works find it difficult to survive in China due to rampant copycat practices by companies eager to make quick and easy money. Once a comic or cartoon proves to be commercially successful, knockoffs multiply and quickly take over the market, causing original works to suffer an abject decline.

Producers face a troubling paradox. To increase their visibility, they have to sell their animations to television stations, led by CCTV's Children's Channel and Aniworld Satellite TV as the best distribution channels. But they do so at a much lower price than their cost prices.

Some argue that the business practice has gravely hurt their business interests, while others believe the ultimate value of a certain cartoons comes from derivatives, such as toys and copyright trading.

Adult comics also find it difficult to take hold, though a huge market beckons.

"It is not a good time to develop adult comics in China because it needs much more capital and brain resources," said Sun Lijun, president of the Animation School at Beijing Film Academy. "Most of all, a large majority of Chinese adults grew up while watching comics and cartoons from Japan and America." His piece, The Legend of A Rabbit, was given the Top Animated Film Award.

Still, many Japanese adult comics are spread throughout China via pirated versions or illegal online downloads, which makes it difficult for a commercial comic to win in a market full of free downloads, Sun added.

For comic and animation students, the career prospect is not a bed of roses. As the business grows, more schools have set up comic and animation majors, and have churned out a growing number of workers for fictional vacancies.

The market, however, is crying for creative professionals as well as managerial and marketing executives. The gap between academy and reality forces many students out of the field and consequently upsets the supply of excellent brain resources, hampering a rapid and healthy industrial development.

The best chance of ensuring a healthy development is to open the black box of the Chinese comic and animation industry, look inside and figur out what makes China act the way it does now.

Considering the increasing competition and pathetic returns at home, some producers have begun to test the waters overseas in an attempt to align themselves closer to international practices.

The Four Great Classical Novels comic series by Creator World Comic Company, a Tianjin-based comic producer and recipient of the Top Comic and Animation Producer award, has cracked the European and East Asia markets. The company's An Ideal World garnered mixed reception from Western critics, who objected mainly to its beginning, but praised the overall story, artwork and themes.

The Legend of A Rabbit, a comic inspired from the story of a local deity in Beijing, has been distributed in 70 countries and regions. The figure is expected to rise as more distributors are negotiating about copyright trading and other forms of cooperation.

Most of those who have succeeded draw heavily from traditional Chinese culture, a central idea that both the government officials and professionals share to expand their economic and cultural influences.

Liu Yuzhu, director of the Industry Division of the Ministry of Culture, said the ministry isn't and will not provide huge capital support to the industry, but instead, the government aims to maintain a sound policy environment through preferential policies, intellectual property protection and tax breaks.

"It is important to sketch a future, but more importantly, we have to make efforts on the ground," Liu said.