Prominent Weibo Users Paid to Bash Apple? Introducing China’s ’820 Party’

Did not expect this to be picked up by HN. I watched the 820 drama on weibo live, it never surprises me how low-class CCTV can be.

As of the reason why CCTV is suddenly after Apple, I saw this chart[1] on weibo, which could shed some lights on the situation. It reveals a detailed breakdown of Apple's TV advertising spending in China. It seems Apple put the lion share of their budget on provincial TV channels (the blue area on the pie charts) instead of CCTV - the supposedly most watched TV channel in the country.

Also, I would like to offer some knowledge of CCTV's mob-like operations.

CCTV has been falling out of favor for both viewers and advertisers. It failed to innovate and offer shows/programs people care to watch; when it falls behind in the marketplace, the state sponsored monopoly would wield its political power and paint competitions politically incorrect labels (Eg. accusing other channels' shows being 'vulgar', 'reactionary' etc..). This has happened a few times with popular shows on provincial channels.

Typically, CCTV do not organize similar massive campaigns to defame its clients; but there's always an exception once a year: the 3-15 annual gala. Every March 15th, CCTV points fingers to companies 'who severely violates consumer rights', exposing industry scandals and unethical businesses. The 3-15 show has its popularity, as consumers frequently fall victim to the wide range of unethical (sometimes outright illegal) behaviors prevailing the Chinese corporate world. CCTV is the only media outlet who has the political capital to make such nationwide accusations without fearing consequences.

Therefore, it is not surprising CCTV leverages this show to send a warning message to its current and potential clients: "we can easily make you or break you, do your advertising with us or watch your brand destroyed next year." It has been a known fact that CCTV uses 3-15 as a tool to punish the 'not-so-well-behaved' advertisers and hold Chinese companies at their hostage to maximize their advertising revenue.

Clearly, Apple has been categorized as one of those bad boys this year, and CCTV decided it needed a lesson.

[1]http://photo.weibo.com/1401318455/wbphotos/large/photo_id/35...

I've been bashing Apple for years for free. Now I feel like I've been robbed! Where's my Apple bashing money, China?

That's the rough reality in China, 'cos basically all the media in China is manipulated by the gov, and they need to do what they are told, or else they will receive a big kick-ass "surprise", which is currently no one would be expecting. So lots of slapsticks like this happen in here from time to time.

Paying people to support a cause makes said cause appear weak and will often backfire on you.

The site appears to be down.

I was able to retrieve the content but not the CSS, so I made a mirror with no stylesheet (but with working comments) here : http://jsbin.com/apanuw/1

Off topic, but those messages are sure a lot longer than 140 characters in translated form. I suppose that if app.net wants to know whether its longer character count limit is a good idea, it can just look to China.

Who but really hardcore Apple shills believe this shit?

Can anyone weigh in some informed hearsay on the general 0day market for iOS vs Android, OSX vs. Windows? Is it possible that Mac products are causing state surveillance headaches?

Another, perhaps more realistic motivation is that it's simply in China's economic interest to support mainland Chinese device manufacturers ... who can only produce using Android.

... posted from a non mobile phone user, on OSX, in China.