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Last week I attended a forum in Guangzhou about the creative industry, a fancy word for things as old as book publishing, as new as e-books and everything in between. Guangdong province, of which Guangzhou is the capital, is often bypassed when visitors look for culture. It is connected to Shenzhen and Hong Kong and is known as "the world's factory floor", not "the world's drawing board". Dismayed officials want to change that perception. "Do you know we have been No 1 in the culture business for six consecutive years?" says Lai Bin, a provincial publicity officer. At 227 billion yuan ($33 billion) for 2008, Guangdong's cultural industries accounted for 6.4 percent of its GDP and experienced a growth rate of 13.8 percent. But Lai admits that size does not equal weight. "Our businesses are mostly small, financing difficult and brands few." One local brand that has made it big is Pleasant Goat and Big, Big Wolf (Xiyangyang Yu Huitailang), also translated as Happy Sheep and Gray Wolf, arguably China's most popular cartoon series currently being aired. But Liu Manyi, general manager of Creative Power Entertaining Inc, the firm behind the hit show, is not laughing to the bank. Instead she is bitter: "Pirate discs were all over the street before our first movie hit the screen. One character endorses children's medicine, another plugs contraceptives, and their images appear on all kinds of products. All this without proper licensing." | 
