During World Animation Day on Tuesday, related topics trended on Chinese social media as users spontaneously launched an online campaign to vote for their "favorite childhood Chinese animation." Against this backdrop, Zhang Peng, a cultural researcher and associate professor at Nanjing Normal University, told the Global Times that Chinese animation has been gaining global recognition through original intellectual properties (IPs) and technological innovation.

This growing influence on both domestic and international audiences is echoed by industry practitioners. Chen Liaoyu, chief director of the online animated series Yao-Chinese Folktales, told media on Tuesday that while the film industry is undergoing major changes and challenges, "telling a good story" remains both the audience's core expectation and creators' greatest way of showing respect for viewers  - something that applies equally to animation.

"The strength of animation lies in its ability to transcend regional, cultural, and linguistic barriers," Chen said. "As Chinese animators, our first task is to tell stories that resonate with domestic audience. But telling good stories to the world is our goal."

The box-office success of Chinese animated films in 2025 illustrates this ambition. This summer, the box office of Nobody surpassed 100 million yuan ($14 million) within two days and reached 1.7 billion yuan in total, while The Legend of Hei 2 outperformed its predecessor, boosting the franchise's brand value.

During the recent National Day holidays, I'm a Bond, GG Bond marked a major transformation for the long-running children's franchise, expanding its appeal to broader age groups, while Three Kingdoms Starlit Heroes sought to re-imagine the Three Kingdoms (220-280) era through bold narrative experimentation and visual imagination, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

Animation is primarily a visual medium and highly reliant on technology. From the perspective of quick economic returns, it is easy to focus solely on market expansion and entertainment value. However, in recent years, what has truly inspired audiences is Chinese animation's steadfast commitment to cultural depth, achieving innovations across aesthetic, cultural, and humanistic dimensions, according to Xinhua.

Zhang noted that both market trends and industry research point to one key factor behind the rapid rise of Chinese animation - its strong cultural foundation.

"Chinese animated films are evolving from merely showcasing cultural symbols to conveying shared values," Zhang said. "They're no longer just retellings of myths or demonstrations of technical prowess, but are shaping a new creative language that blends Eastern storytelling with global grammar." 

This cultural and creative momentum is reflected in recent industry data. The recently released China Animation Development Report (2025) shows that animated films in China have entered a new phase of "mass consumption," with young creators emerging as a key driving force behind content evolution. A distinctive Chinese animation aesthetic - one that blends tradition with modernity, is steadily taking shape.

According to the report, there are now more than 198,000 animation-related companies across the country, with over 60 percent having been operating for five to 10 years, forming the backbone of the industry. An increasing number of studios are moving from working independently to collaborating on large-scale projects, greatly enhancing coordination capabilities. For instance, Ne Zha 2 involved joint production from as many as 138 companies.

"This trend reflects the parallel growth of systemic maturity and innovation within China's animation industry," Zhao Yafeng, a post-production visual effects artist from an animation studio, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

"Artificial intelligence is becoming deeply integrated into the creative process, bringing new possibilities for animation techniques and storytelling while greatly improving production efficiency," she said.

In 2024, China premiered its first AI-generated video animation, Poems of Timeless Acclaim, which used AI technology to transform classical Chinese poetry into ink-style animations. Under the same budget, producing Poems of Timeless Acclaim through traditional animation workflows would have taken at least eight months; leveraging large AI models, the production cycle was reduced to four months. Currently, this application remains at the stage of combining production and research, as large model technology matures in the future, both production timelines and animation detail are expected to accelerate and improve, according to CCTV News.

"Today, as more young people join the industry, bringing both a deep understanding of traditional culture and mastery of digital tools, Chinese animation has gained a more open and multidimensional means of expression," Zhao noted. "This dual integration of technology and culture is transforming Chinese animation from simply 'telling a good story' to 'creating an entire world.'"

World Animation Day commemorates October 28, 1892, when French inventor Emile Reynaud made history by publicly screening the first animated film at the Grevin Museum in Paris.