ABSTRACT
This chapter examines children's reactions to content, the choices they make and the pleasures they derive from those choices. It looks at children's media as a top-down process by which the population is induced to develop along certain national, political and cultural avenues. The chapter considers ways in which the internationalization and subsequent domestication of children's culture feeds on the creative autonomy of the children's market place. It suggests that children represent a formidable target audience for content provision and associated merchandising, but that they nonetheless remain central foci of the state's objective to reproduce itself and its values through education and mediated messages. The production of media for Chinese children is entering a financially dangerous but potentially thrilling stage of development. Although the animated industry is generally deemed to be in crisis, there are people taking risks and forging new ways of working. They may also need to forge an international view of their audiences.
