No Easy Going

The sole proprietor business model like the one used by Bai and Zhao is the basis of China's creative industry, which includes cartoon creation and clothing design as well as the transformation of ideas into industrial products and daily necessities. More and more "creative industry" products are finding their way into the homes of ordinary Chinese families. 

Whilst young designers are adept at transforming their ideas into marketable products, there are still issues they must grapple with in the process of production and distribution. "There is another, more sinister way to determine the success of a design – whether it is copied or pirated," laments Bai.

Although four of Bai's most successful products are patented, three of them have been involved in protracted intellectual property courtroom battles. Bai won these cases, but still paid substantial lawyers' fees and suffered losses in earnings. "I was awarded RMB 6,000 in compensation, but I still had to pay RMB 10,000 in legal costs and spent a lot of time on the case," says Bai with a bitter smile.

Bai maintains that in copying only the most obvious, external features of the design, imitations actually distort the designer's original intentions. In other words, you can copy originality but you'll miss what the creator was trying to say. 

In contrast to Bai, Zhao isn't all that pessimistic about copyright infringement. "Actually I think I should probably thank the intellectual pirates – if it wasn't for them, my cartoon figures wouldn't have become well known enough for me to create and sell related products."

With novelty being a salient feature of creativity, people usually require some time to fully accept these new products. Some products will appeal to only a relatively small market, and the designers won't go on to sell millions.

Due to limited funds and the nature of his products, Bai's handiwork can't really be mass-produced. Sales volumes are low so many manufacturers are unwilling to accept his production requests. Indeed, low supply and low profits mean many shops just don't stock his products at all.    

When Zhao first sought out publishers for his drawings, he was turned down domestically. It was only after his work was published in France that local companies finally caught on to his talent.   

According to Zhao, it is hard to say whether the Chinese cartoon industry is already a mature market or not. The pursuit of maximum profits has led to a dulling of creativity and an actual shrinkage in readership. There are no doubt plenty of cartoonists and committed readers in China, but the domestic industry lacks the confidence and patience to follow the creative process through to hit on original products with mass-market appeal.    

"There is a great leap from original thinking to creating a successful industry. There are problems, for example, in assessing the accounting value of intangible assets and hence in securing financing," says Li Wuwei, president of the Shanghai Creative Industries Association. "We should focus our efforts on creating an efficient industrial chain through improving our business models, establishing a credit guarantee system and strengthening inter-industry cooperation."