China's Cat-and-Mouse Game

By Matthew Forney/Beijing

After bashing each other with frying pans for decades, cat-and-mouse cartoon combo Tom and Jerry are fighting a new battle--against Chinese nationalism. Beijing's censors banned the pair from the airwaves in October because Chinese producers had given them voices in local dialects instead of Mandarin, the national language. The ban reflected the government's effort to unify China's disparate regions by stressing national over regional interests. Yet these days, China's profit-driven media are pulling in the opposite direction by marketing to provincial pride. A hot-selling series of new books, for instance, celebrates local mores. I Am a Northeastern Man champions the grace of Manchurian women, while The Spirit of the Hunan People argues that

the courage of that province's denizens "earns them the respect of their enemies." The most popular song of the past two years compares people in the region near North Korea to the Communist Party's most revered soldier-hero, Lei Feng. And China's most popular sitcom producer, Ping Da, says he plans to shoot a series of new programs set in cities around China, "full of inside jokes that people from elsewhere won't get." Even Tom and Jerry--who are mute in America--will stay vocal. Banned from broadcast, they're available on DVD. --By Matthew Forney/Beijing