Aw! No more anime or Disney on Chinese TV?

Old joke, still apt:

Minnie Mouse is crying her eyes out. She wants a divorce. She and Mickey go to a marriage counselor. "He accused me of having an affair!" sobs Minnie. "I did not!" says Mickey, "I just said she was f***ing goofy!"

Last week, ... brought a new restriction. [Chinese] officials reiterated that "as soon as possible," all Japanese animé and Western cartoons, including those of Disney, will be purged from Chinese TV - to be replaced by all Chinese-drawn cartoons.

from a Christian Science Monitor story, Even Pop Culture Must get a Stamp of Approval in China

it continues:

"There is a reluctance to put Western culture and thinking in children's heads, and we have enough superb drawing to fill our [television] channels," explains the Beijing-based scholar.

One fad that has faded is rock music, which briefly flourished in the 1990s before it inevitably took on a political cast. It was pointed out that Soviet youth during the glasnost period listened to rock music. That took away the kind of support necessary in China to make anything new take hold. China's ace rocker Cui Jin [sic - he means Cui Jian] was censored, as are those few foreign bands who still come here.

"China is becoming more diverse," says University of Chicago expert Dali Yang. "Some of the changes are normal fads like any country has. [But sometimes] China feels like France, where it feels its culture and language are under siege. I think the country is trying to strike a proper balance."