Tom and Jerry, beware!

China could ban foreign-made cartoons from prime time television once the quantity and quality of domestic cartoons reach a certain level, officials at the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) said Wednesday.

The country already limits the ratio of foreign-made cartoons to domestic ones to 4:6, said an official at the agency's cartoon department, who refused to give her name.

"We really need to encourage domestic-made cartoons,'' said Fu Tiezhen, head of the China Cartoon Arts Committee, an industry group.

"From the mid-80s, a lot of cartoons from America and Japan were imported into China for free or at very little cost. It's a kind of dumping,'' Fu said.

The popularity of foreign cartoons, widely available both on television and on disk, has long troubled bureaucrats hoping to nurture the domestic industry.

Yet foreign cartoons dubbed into Chinese remain a staple on late afternoon and weekend television.

Fu said he believed the cartoon industry would best develop through the ``market system,'' but in the meantime some administrative measures might help. ``We should take action to protect our national culture,'' he said.

Chinese studios have leveraged their low labor costs to gain a growing share of the business of animating cartoons for foreign studios. Yet they've had little luck building up their own brands. Apart from a handful of traditional tales like Journey to the West, there are few locally made selections.

Meanwhile, Disney brand shops have opened up in many cities, and pirated knockoffs of their products are widely available in markets and shops.

A ban would have to be enforced by the SARFT, and could violate World Trade Organization rules on providing equal treatment to foreign and domestic businesses.ASSOCIATED PRESS