Sina Corp.

A screengrab from Sina Corp.’s Weibo micrblog service showing an illustration of a Snow White-like character apparently poisoned with Mengniu milk. “Mengniu: The stepmother’s new choice,” the caption says.

What’s the newest way to curse people in China? “I hope your entire family drinks Mengniu.”

The phrase is making its way around China’s Internet, as consumers flock to Sina Corp.’s Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblogging service, to criticize China Mengniu Dairy Co. following recent findings by government inspectors that a batch of its milk contained carcinogens.

Despite apologizing to consumers and stating that it destroyed contaminated products before they got to market, Mengniu is facing a significant public relations crisis. The speed and vehemence of the criticism offers a reminder of the power of Sina Weibo and similar online social-networking services over brands in a country with few approved venues for mass public expression.

Investors have also punished the company. Shares of Mengniu’s stock, listed in Hong Kong, were down nearly 24% to 20.10 Hong Kong dollars (US$2.58) in Wednesday trading.  The findings were released over the weekend, but Hong Kong’s market was closed on Monday and Tuesday for the Christmas holiday.

A spokesman for the company didn’t respond to phone calls on Wednesday.

The brand has become the hottest trending topic on Weibo, according to the service’s measuring system, with nearly five million posts complaining about the quality of its products.

One Weibo user in Henan province, referring to China’s population, said: “Mengniu, you’ve taken 1.3 billion lives for granted, have treated 1.3 billion people as your lab rats.”

One illustration frequently posted shows a cartoon of fairy tale legend Snow White poisoned with a Mengniu beverage in hand. A caption below stated, “Mengniu, the stepmother’s new choice.”

Mengniu has overcome public crises in the past, rebuilding trust with consumers in the wake of a 2008 milk scandal in which its brand was one of 22 whose baby formula was found to have contained melamine and caused the deaths of six infants and illnesses in 300,000 others.

But this time is different thanks to the evolution of social media, which makes it far easier for consumers to voice their opinions of a company and quicker to influence others’ opinions of the brands.

Social media sites like Weibo have increased the urgency for companies to respond quickly to consumer complaints, said Debby Cheung, group managing director at Ogilvy Public Relations in China. “The golden rule of crisis management is to react and respond as quickly as possible,” Ms. Cheung said.

Mengniu has weighed in on the social-media scene. The company has its own Weibo account and has been circulating apologies to consumers, noting that it is consistently “learning from lessons.”

In addition to broad complaints, many on the Web are launching a boycott against the Inner Mongolia-based company. More than 50,000 Weibo users have sent around a message stating that they vow not to buy Mengniu products, newspapers containing the company’s advertising, or watch television shows that are supported by Mengniu. “Don’t tell people they are brain damaged, just tell them they grew up drinking Mengniu,” the message says.

–Laurie Burkitt. Follower her on Twitter @lburkitt.

Associated Press

China’s consumer price index rose 4.2% in November from a year earlier, sharply slower than a 5.5% year-to-year rise in October and the lowest inflation reading since September 2010. Analysts weigh in:

We believe the decline of inflation opens room for policy easing, and the cut in the bank reserve requirement ratio (RRR) on 30 November marks the beginning of a monetary policy easing cycle. We expect inflation to trend down further in the first half of 2012 to below 4% [year-on-year], and GDP growth should slow quickly to 7.5% in the first quarter…A 2009-style aggressive loosening would be difficult, as the government realizes the long term costs of fiscal stimulus. – Zhiwei Zhang and Wendy Chen, Nomura

The statistical effect resulting from last year’s high base has made a substantial contribution to the price correction. This, combined with possible further monetary easing in US and Europe, means that it might be still too early for China to claim complete victory over inflation. Nonetheless, sharp disinflation does free up some wiggle-room for monetary easing…Interest rates remain the big ticket item that markets are eyeing, but given that inflation remains lodged above deposit rates, we feel the likelihood of movement is low at present. That said, as CPI falls, real deposit rates edge closer to positive, and should begin to act as a draw for household deposits. Perversely, this should provide further downward pressure on the property market, as yield-seeking households err towards the banking sector rather than the sliding real estate sector. – Xianfang Ren and Alistair Thornton, IHS Global Insight

Due to holiday and other seasonal factors, we may see sizeable monthly price increases in the months ahead. The impact of electricity tariff increase will gradually kick in (we estimate the direct impact of 5% increase in end-user tariff increase at about 0.1%)…The November inflation and growth data will likely reinforce the shift of priorities from anti-inflation to supporting growth. We expect the policy tone to be changed in that direction during the Central Economic Work Conference to be held early next week. A couple more RRR cuts are likely by the Chinese New Year. – Shuang Ding, Minggao Shen, Daxue Wang and Serena Wang, Citigroup

Inflation risks in China have been significantly lowered due to the worsened global economic outlook and the ongoing downturn of the pork price cycle. We expect CPI inflation could average at 3.5% in 2012, with CPI readings possibly at 3% or even below in some months in mid-year…In our view, the chance for a very low inflation is very small, because China’s policies are flexible. If inflation is declining faster than projected, the government will likely seize the opportunity to carry out power tariff hikes and other price reforms, which would be difficult when inflation pressures are high. – Ting Lu, Xiaojia Zhi and Weijun Hu, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch

– compiled by Josh Chin and Aaron Back

Reuters

Visitors use a slingshot to shoot an Angry Bird plush toy at a real life Angry Birds outdoor game in a theme park at Changsha, Hunan province September 1, 2011.

As promised, Angry Birds have made a nest in Shanghai.

Rovio, the small Finnish company that created the notoriously addictive bird-throwing game, launched its first overseas operation in China on Tuesday as it prepares to further penetrate the Chinese market.

The company said it’s looking to push into the largely neglected feature phone sector and lay groundwork for future Chinese acquisitions, according to a China Daily report Wednesday. That sector encompasses most phones that aren’t smartphones and accounts for 86% of China’s 1-billion-strong population of mobile phone users.

The new Rovio operation is located in an animation center in Shanghai’s Baoshan district, the paper said. It will be fully operational by the end of the year with around 20 staff.

China Daily quoted Zhang Lijun, chairman of VoDone, a Beijing-based telemedia partner of Rovio’s, as saying 30 million new handsets every year will come with the game already installed after VoDone puts the game on its platform.

Like elsewhere in the world, Angry Birds is a mega-hit in China. Nearly 40 million people have downloaded the game, Rovio says, and game-related shoes and stuffed toys are popular, too.

Inventive (or opportunistic) Chinese have also paid homage to the game by building an unlicensed life-sized Angry Birds theme park in Hunan province, as well as an unauthorized 7-inch Angry Birds-themed tablet.

Commenting on the theme park in April, chief marketing officer Peter Vesterbacka said Rovio took pride in being one of the top three most copied brands in China and aims to translate that popularity into sales.

Rovio says downloads of the game in China may catapult to 100 million by the end of the year. To cater to that growing fan base, the company came out with a special Angry Birds “Moon Festival” edition to celebrate China’s annual harvest holiday, which is akin to Thanksgiving in the U.S. Rovio also released real moon cakes in the shape of the title characters in Hong Kong, setting off a buying frenzy among parents of rabid fan-children as well as professional middlemen.

– Jean Yung

Sina Weibo

A screenshot shows a series of photos of Huaxi’s landmark replicas posted to the Sina Weibo microblogging site, where they prompted a criticisms of China’s culture of duplication.

Huaxi Village – long considered China’s richest village – showcased its plus-size replicas of landmarks like Paris’ Arc de Triomphe, the U.S. Capitol and the Tiananmen Rostrum last week as a way to draw attention from tourists.

Instead, the village has found itself in the middle of an ongoing debate about China’s penchant for duplication and whether it stymies innovation.

Huaxi, a village of more than 1,500 people a less than three-hour drive from Shanghai that has long been touted as a model of China’s version of capitalism, looking to further boost its business from tourism.

Sun Haiyan, a spokesman for Huaxi Village, said on Thursday that the village’s economy took in 200 million yuan (US$31 million) from tourism-related business last year.

The replicas of global landmarks are intended to boost that business. Though they are a couple of years old, they received renewed attention last week, during the National Day weeklong holiday, when the village celebrated the 50th anniversary of its establishment.

“In 2010, more than two million people visited our village,” Mr. Sun said in an interview. “The figure will surely be bigger this year.”

But the replicas have drawn a heated discussion on China’s Internet, which has been buzzing about issues surrounding innovation since the death last week of Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs.

“Tiananmen should apply for a patent. Otherwise the replicas of Tiananmen will come out constantly,” Shao Lianxiang, vice president of Chinese property developer Zhongyi Holding Co., wrote on the Sina Weibo. One internet poster with the online pseudonym Jiangdong Dahu said on Sina Weibo: “This is plainly the work of uneducated, uncultured villagers.”

In a commentary published Thursday, the Beijing Morning Post said the replicas proved that the village’s success hasn’t engendered a distinctive cultural identity. Rather, it has provided a vivid example that illustrates the Chinese people’s psychological state.

It also brought up a replica of Beijing National Stadium, or the Bird’s Nest, being built in a suburb of Nanjing. “In recent days, the Chinese public has hotly debated the topic of why doesn’t China have a lifelong innovator like [Steve] Jobs. If Jobs could see the Capitol Hill in China’s No. 1 village, what would he think? How many replicas of the White House and Bird’s Nest will we see before a Chinese Jobs is born?”

Duplication in China, long a gripe among trade partners, has grabbed even more headlines of late, including a fake Apple Store selling real iPads and iPhones in a setting remarkably similar to Apple’s trademark retail outlets. In Changzhou, Jiangsu Global Digital Cultural Theme Park Co. has opened a park called Global Animation Joyland, which bloggers have called attention to because it includes a section that appears to be based on Activision Blizzard Inc.’s World of Warcraft online game.

– Rose Yu

Sina Weibo

A screenshot shows a series of photos of Huaxi’s landmark replicas posted to the Sina Weibo microblogging site, where they prompted a criticisms of China’s culture of duplication.

Huaxi Village – long considered China’s richest village – showcased its plus-size replicas of landmarks like Paris’ Arc de Triomphe, the U.S. Capitol and the Tiananmen Rostrum last week as a way to draw attention from tourists.

Instead, the village has found itself in the middle of an ongoing debate about China’s penchant for duplication and whether it stymies innovation.

Huaxi, a village of more than 1,500 people a less than three-hour drive from Shanghai that has long been touted as a model of China’s version of capitalism, looking to further boost its business from tourism.

Sun Haiyan, a spokesman for Huaxi Village, said on Thursday that the village’s economy took in 200 million yuan (US$31 million) from tourism-related business last year.

The replicas of global landmarks are intended to boost that business. Though they are a couple of years old, they received renewed attention last week, during the National Day weeklong holiday, when the village celebrated the 50th anniversary of its establishment.

“In 2010, more than two million people visited our village,” Mr. Sun said in an interview. “The figure will surely be bigger this year.”

But the replicas have drawn a heated discussion on China’s Internet, which has been buzzing about issues surrounding innovation since the death last week of Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs.

“Tiananmen should apply for a patent. Otherwise the replicas of Tiananmen will come out constantly,” Shao Lianxiang, vice president of Chinese property developer Zhongyi Holding Co., wrote on the Sina Weibo. One internet poster with the online pseudonym Jiangdong Dahu said on Sina Weibo: “This is plainly the work of uneducated, uncultured villagers.”

In a commentary published Thursday, the Beijing Morning Post said the replicas proved that the village’s success hasn’t engendered a distinctive cultural identity. Rather, it has provided a vivid example that illustrates the Chinese people’s psychological state.

It also brought up a replica of Beijing National Stadium, or the Bird’s Nest, being built in a suburb of Nanjing. “In recent days, the Chinese public has hotly debated the topic of why doesn’t China have a lifelong innovator like [Steve] Jobs. If Jobs could see the Capitol Hill in China’s No. 1 village, what would he think? How many replicas of the White House and Bird’s Nest will we see before a Chinese Jobs is born?”

Duplication in China, long a gripe among trade partners, has grabbed even more headlines of late, including a fake Apple Store selling real iPads and iPhones in a setting remarkably similar to Apple’s trademark retail outlets. In Changzhou, Jiangsu Global Digital Cultural Theme Park Co. has opened a park called Global Animation Joyland, which bloggers have called attention to because it includes a section that appears to be based on Activision Blizzard Inc.’s World of Warcraft online game.

– Rose Yu

Reuters

China’s top private company, according to the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce.

China Inc. boasts some of the biggest corporate names in the world today: China Mobile Ltd., PetroChina, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd, just to name a few. But while the commanding heights of the world’s second-largest economy are still firmly in the hands of China’s state-owned enterprises, who are the overachievers in the private sector?

Two recent surveys try to answer that question. On Wednesday the China Europe International Business School released its eighth annual list of China’s top 100 private listed companies, after surveying the 2010 operating revenue of 1502 firms listed in Hong Kong, the U.S. and mainland China. And in late August the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce issued its 2011 edition of China’s top 500 private enterprises, also ranked by operating revenue (pdf in Chinese).

The definitive word on who is the greatest of them all probably goes to the ACFIC, a quasi-government industry group. With the private sector’s great and good – many of whom are closely held – among its members, it can get the inside word on how much private firms are actually making. Still, some firms are notably absent from the list such as banks and financial institutions.

Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China Ltd., which tops the CEIBS survey, doesn’t make an appearance on the ACFIC list. Instead ACFIC ranks telecommunications-equipment maker Huawei Technologies Co. as top dog, although its private status has been questioned by governments in the West wary of its seemingly close relationship with Beijing. Steelmaker Jiangsu Shagang Co. Ltd. comes in at number two on the ACFIC list, and electronics and home appliance retailer Suning Corp. comes in third.

CEIBS ranks Suning’s listed unit, Suning Appliance Co. Ltd, second.

The CEIBS survey is limited in that it only looks at listed firms, but its value comes in comparisons it makes with listed state-owned firms. According to CEIBS, China has 8.4 million private enterprises accounting for 74% of the country’s total number of firms. But if the earnings of publicly traded firms are anything to go by, state-owned firms still dwarf the private sector in size with the average listed private company generating only about 25% the total net profit of an average listed state-owned firm. However, private firms saw faster revenue growth as a group — 21.46% against 18.88% for state owned firms.

The thing that jumps out from both lists is the number of names from the consumer and retail sectors, areas in which state firms play less of a role. Home appliance makers Qingdao Haier Co. and Gd Midea Holding Co., and dairy producer China Mengniu Dairy Co. made the top 20 of the CEIBS list, and car company Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., food processor Yurun Group and beverage maker Hangzhou Wahaha Group Co. were in the ACFIC’s top 20.

Few are household names outside of China yet. But as a primer on the Chinese brands that could one day be advertising on television screens and magazine in Europe and the U.S., the lists offer an interesting snapshot.

– Dinny McMahon

Eric Feferberg/Associated Press

When traveling in the countryside, Mr. Hu (right) apparently prefers more hirsute company than French President Nicolas Sarkozy (left).

President Hu Jintao might be greeted by unshaven villagers wearing old clothes when he travels to the countryside to share a meal with locals. If so, then everything went according to plan.

A recently released Wikileaks cable provides a rare and detailed glimpse into the degree of stage managing involved when Mr. Hu makes domestic visits, usually with state-run news agencies in tow. The cable describes a great deal of secrecy over Mr. Hu’s identity, keeping local officials in the dark until the president himself arrives, as well as measures that include keeping the temperature of home cooking oil low so he won’t be scalded while helping locals prepare a meal.

Mr. Hu’s domestic trips are regularly the top story on China’s national evening news. His meetings with farmers, factory workers and schoolchildren, among others, harken to the party’s populist roots and are a chance for the propaganda apparatus to soften Mr. Hu’s often rigid outward persona.

The cable is based on an interview between embassy staff and a former ranking local party official, whose poverty-stricken district in the northwestern province of Gansu Mr. Hu visited during the Chinese New Year holiday in 2007.

Ten days before Mr. Hu’s visit, an advance team from Beijing arrived to tell the local leader that a ranking party member would be visiting, though its members never revealed that Mr. Hu was the expected visitor. Then, three days before Mr. Hu would arrive, the advance team chose a farmhouse in one of the district’s villages where Mr. Hu would share a traditional New Year’s meal.

Officials finally chose the home of 70-year-old Li Cai, a longtime party member.

“The house appealed to the General Office advance team not only because it looked rustic…but Li himself sported a long beard that made him the epitome of a weathered Gansu farmer,” the cable read.

With the location chosen, officials ordered that nothing be changed. Party officials fear local cadres would try to spruce up a house too much, and the local officials ordered Mr. Li not to shave his long beard.

The cable goes on to describe the meal itself:

Word came from the General Office that “the visitor” wanted to make meat dumplings with the family…even though it was not the local custom. Another part of the meal, a genuine local tradition of frying twisted dough sticks in a wok of boiling oil, presented the serious risk of hot oil splashing on Hu Jintao. The solution…was to heat the oil to 70 percent of the normal temperature and give Hu an extra long set of chopsticks. When it came time to eat, Hu’s own undercooked portion was set aside in favor of properly fried dough sticks that had been prepared earlier.

Stage managing the trips of top political leaders isn’t unique to the Chinese. There was no shortage of photo-ops during Vice President Joe Biden’s recent trip to the country, for example. In one case, shortly after Mr. Biden finished a private tea in the city of Dujiangyan in the southwestern province of Sichuan with his Chinese counterpart, Vice President Xi Jinping, the two men chatted casually (at least as casually as the vice presidents of China and the U.S. are capable) on the city’s idyllic South Bridge. More than 100 journalists, State Department and Foreign Ministry officials looked on, not to mention a small army of U.S. Secret Service.

So, what to do when a scripted moment goes astray? The cable describes a moment from Mr. Hu’s 2007 visit to Gansu, when the young granddaughter of wispy-bearded Mr. Li refused the local potato variety Mr. Hu offered her. The child complained she was tired of eating them.

“The family eventually cajoled the girl into accepting,” the cable read. A shot of Mr. Hu and the young girl together sharing the local specialty was later broadcast on the national evening news.

(CCTV footage of Mr. Hu’s visit to the Li household can be viewed here, starting at around the 5:30 mark)

– Brian Spegele. Follow him on Twitter @bspegele.

Qilai Shen/Bloomberg News

Shoppers walk past a store displaying a China UnionPay Co. sticker in Shanghai, one of two cities impacted by UnionPay’s temporary outage in the lead-up to the Lunar New Year holiday.

It’s not easy being a monopoly. China UnionPay Co. can attest to that.

Last month, the U.S. government decided to formally launch a case at the World Trade Organization to force open China’s electronic payments market, a move aimed at breaking China UnionPay’s domestic monopoly.

Meanwhile, the company is also on the nose with China’s netizens after its network broke down less than two weeks out from Chinese New Year.

Let’s say it’s two weeks out from Christmas, you’re out buying presents for the family days before boarding a plane home and you discover than none of your bankcards – not your Visa, MasterCard, Amex, Discover or any other – work. That’s broadly the equivalent of what happened in China (although the Chinese aren’t yet as attached to their plastic as consumers elsewhere), with one notable exception: The only network that operates in China for transactions in the local currency is UnionPay’s.

The stoppage only lasted only 26 minutes according to an apology posted on UnionPay’s Web site and was limited to parts of Shanghai and Guangzhou. It nevertheless unleashed a barrage of questions over whether UnionPay should have the right to a monopoly.

“I’m firmly against UnionPay’s monopoly,” a person who identified him or herself as being from Shanghai’s central business district posted on a Sina blog page. “They not only monopolize the market, but also at the same time they can’t provide safe and reliable services…It’s high time the country’s regulatory authorities…managed this.”

A person writing under the name Beijing Wangmin, or Beijing Netizen, complained that an apology is not enough. “This is beyond doubt another typical case of a monopolistic company beating the public with its power.”

While the monopoly has helped China build a payment company that is now strong enough to try and take on Visa and MasterCard overseas, it’s also created systemic risk domestically. Whereas countries that allow competition have multiple networks that allow people to continue to make payments even if one network goes down, China is dependent on one system only.

And the breakdown may not be the first of its kind. Local media reported the network also broke down in Shanghai in April 2006.

“There’s probably a need to set up more than one retail payment settlement network, just in case there should ever be a breakdown in the system that could affect card holders’ interests,” said David Tsao, director general of the Research Center for Settlement and Clearance at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Whether that alternative network should be built by foreign firms is not a foregone conclusion.

“Efficiency only comes with competition,” a person writing under the name Endless River posted on Sina. “It’s time to build another China UnionPay, but this time with ‘people’ in its name.”

–Dinny McMahon, with contributions from Yoli Zhang

While many families sat down for Christmas dinners and exchanged gifts in many parts of the world, China was no exception today. Even though Christmas is not an official holiday, many Chinese get in the holiday spirit at Christmas...

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Simpfendorfer says in a note Monday that China’s export figures for the last two months may have been artificially inflated by the country’s weeklong Lunar New Year holiday, which fell unusually late this year, and that a return to normality in March may bring some awakening to those speculating about the yuan.

China halted the yuan’s rise against the dollar in July 2008 as the worsening global financial crisis began weighing more on China’s exports. So some analysts are watching trade performance to try to get a read on Beijing’s willingness to let the yuan resume its appreciation.

Most analysts who follow China’s economic policy closely think that no big, sudden moves are in the offing. Still, the improving trade picture in recent months has helped feed speculation of a change, and economists like Goldman Sachs’s Jim O’Neill and Stephen Jen, a currencies investor at hedge fund BlueGold Capital saying they expect a one-off revaluation of the yuan in the not so distant future.

On Saturday, People’s Bank of China Gov. Zhou Xiaochuan indicated that China will eventually move away from its current exchange-rate policies, which he described as a temporary response to the global financial crisis—the first explicit statement by a top official that yuan’s de-facto peg to the dollar will end at some point. But Zhou also played down the idea that a move will come soon.

Simpfendorfer says that the late holiday this year meant China’s factories had to rush to ship their goods early in order to ensure that they hit store shelves by early April and the arrival of Easter holidays. “The result has been a scramble for shipping capacity in the past month,” he says. “Container rates have soared as a result.”

This may have translated into higher-than-normal exports in the first months of the year, he says. That’s what happened in 2007, the last time the Lunar New Year came late, when China’s export growth in February surged to 52% from a year earlier, before slowing to just 7% in March.

China’s trade data for March won’t be released for a month, but interested observers will be looking to the February data, expected Wednesday, for part of the picture. In January, exports rose by a cracking 21% from a year earlier, and a Dow Jones Newswires survey of 11 economists shows forecast centering on a 38% increase for February’s figure.

Simpfendorfer expects any slump to only be temporary. “But if the March result surprises officials and the market, it might temporarily delay appreciation expectations,” he says.

–Dinny McMahon

That’s what bloggers and at least one Chinese news outlet have been saying. According to their reports, which couldn’t be confirmed, China Central Television’s web site was hacked Monday night—purportedly by viewers displeased with its annual Lunar New Year extravaganza two days earlier—causing users trying to access the site to be greeted with a picture of a scantily clad woman rather than CCTV’s usual content (in Chinese here). One Web site that ran the story also included what it said was a screen shot of the attack.

China’s official media have remained silent on the supposed attack. CCTV officials couldn’t be reached for comment on Tuesday (China is in the middle of a weeklong holiday).

CCTV’s annual gala on New Year’s eve—one of the most watched programs in the world’s biggest TV market—has become a lightening rod for dissatisfaction with the broadcaster. Critics say the show is uninspired and boring. Even other parts of the state media have piled on: the English-language China Daily newspaper on Friday, a day before the show, said the nearly 30-year-old tradition “is now outdated, or at best, a nostalgia trip.”

But such criticism was mild compared with what was to follow. Internet bulletin boards lit up over the last couple of days as people complained about the large number of product placements throughout Saturday’s performance, prompting the director to publicly defend his programming decisions. The media report about the supposed hacking of CCTV suggested that discontent over the ads was a likely motive.

All this comes as CCTV is still reeling from the PR effects of the fire that gutted a tower in its glitzy new headquarters complex in Beijing a year ago. The fire was caused by an unauthorized fireworks show put on by CCTV officials. The government said last week that 44 people faced criminal charges for their involvement in that fire while 27 others will receive administrative penalties.

China has been the focal point for debate over internet security in recent months after Google and other western firms said they were victims of a sophisticated cyber attacks that appeared to originate in China. China’s government has denied those allegations, and argued that China itself is the biggest global victim of hacking. According to a report released last year by the National Computer Network Emergency Response Coordination Center of China, hackers in China caused losses of 7.6 billion yuan in 2009.

Most recently Baidu, Google’s main Chinese competitor, had its domain name, which is administered by a U.S. company, disabled for several hours by a cyber attack. Many Internet users cited signs that an Iranian group was behind the attack. Users in China reported seeing a banner for the “Iranian Cyber Army,” complete with an Iranian flag and a shattered Star of David, when they tried to access Baidu’s home page.

If CCTV’s site was hacked, the scale and sophistication falls far short of those against Google or Baidu, with the CCTV outage basically a temporary inconvenience for people looking for updates on the Winter Olympics.

Still, such an attack against CCTV would represent an unusually bold expression of the widespread public disaffection with the centerpiece of China’s propaganda apparatus.

–Dinny McMahon