Sina Weibo

An ad for the “Red Pad” reposted to the Sina Weibo microblogging platform advertises “70 different premium services for leading cadres.”

The only reference material a loyal Chinese Communist Party member would need to do his job in the 1960s was Mao’s Little Red Book.

Today, there’s the Red Pad (红派壹号).

Or so claimed Chinese media last month, when the websites of state-run media ran articles about the availability of an iPad-like device for the ideologically pure Communist. Running a version of Google Inc.’s Android software and boasting a 9.7-inch screen, the Red Pad offered content specifically tailored to China’s Communist platforms such as the website of the party’s People’s Daily mouthpiece – as well as a budget-busting price of 9,999 yuan ($1,584), more than twice the price of a comparable tablet from Apple Inc.

But stories and advertisements touting the Red Pad disappeared from Chinese media this week after China’s online community offered scathing reviews. Alluding to the steep price as well as the perception of widespread use of public funds for gift-giving within Chinese officialdom, one online poster with the name Khriz quipped, “Red Pad No.1? Corruption No.1!”

It’s unclear whether such a product was ever going to reach potential customers, or who the manufacturer was. Articles in state-run outlets such as the China Daily newspaper said the device was the brainchild of a former People’s Daily reporter named Liu Xianri. Mr. Liu couldn’t be reached.

The marketing materials say the Red Pad is being offered jointly with the People’s Daily newspaper and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Zhang Ningbin, an official with the foreign affairs office of the People’s Daily group, said paper’s online news site has a content-sharing agreement with Mr. Liu but it is unaffiliated with the product. The paper’s news website had removed its own article on the Red Pad on Tuesday (see cached version, in Chinese)

Officials at MIIT couldn’t be reached.

Both the reported device and the reaction reflect the power of micrblogs such as Sina Corp.’s Weibo, where policy changes are now announced where they were once trumpeted through posters. “This is a caring friend for ol’ cadres,” claimed one advertisement for the Red Pad posted online.

Like many other electronic tablets, the Red Pad features swipe control of apps, a touchscreen, an A9 dual-core processor, 16GB of flash storage. WiFi and 3G connectivity. But unlike more proletariat tablets that tout the ability to run Angry Birds, the Red Pad comes loaded with apps that tap into the latest in Party Thought, like “E-Politics Square.” Others track the Weibo postings of senior leaders as well as their movements.

A “daily political reference” app offers a channel to private, need-to-know-only People’s Daily updates on the political instructions of senior policymakers, according to the marketing materials. Reflecting the Party’s determination to put the public’s livelihood first, one app offers a way to gauge public sentiment streaming through cyberspace. The service costs an extra 3,800 yuan, according to the ads.

Ahead of next week’s the Year of the Dragon holiday – a time for gift giving that always seems to benefit Chinese officials – commentators were asking who might be paying for the device. A user named Yan Wai said, “This is a computer exclusively designed for cadres. Using this, you won’t get sleepy during work or meetings and you will get a stronger body. Yes, only 9999. Please order it using public funds!”

Disappointed customers could still buy the $1.99 Little Red Book app on the Apple website.

Quotations from the founder of modern China, Chairman Mao, which came to be known as the Little Red Book, debuted four full turns of the Chinese zodiac ago, in 1964’s Year of the Dragon. It was printed for more than a decade and carried pithy sayings such as, “Complacency is the enemy of study.”

– James T. Areddy and Yang Jie; follow him on Twitter @jamestareddy

Correction & Amplification: An earlier version of this post listed the price of the Little Red Book app as $3.99.

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Pop-up victims? Computer users at a cafe in Beijing.

If the frequent use of intrusive ads on Chinese websites has ever caused you to grimace, gripe or growl, then the government here has a message for you: They feel your pain.

And, they’re not going to do much about it.

China’s relevant regulator, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, on Saturday issued rules meant to create a healthier environment for Internet companies and for users of their services. Among the new rules: No maliciously blocking users from accessing services offered by other Internet companies, no tricking users into downloading software, and no suspending services to them without a good reason.

Not among the rules: a ban on pop-up ads. But the new regulations do make a small concession to users on pop-up ads—and an unusual explanation of why the ministry didn’t do more.

“Pop-up ad windows are an issue to which users have a strong reaction,” Li Guobin, a ministry inspector, said in a question-and-answer statement issued along with the new rules.

But, he continues: “Since the free (services) model in China’s Internet services industry is built on subsidies from ad revenue, if pop-up ad windows were totally banned, it would change the industry’s current business model, in the end hurting the interests of users and affecting the industry’s development.”

The statement doesn’t say why companies couldn’t just use a different kind of ad.

Not all Chinese websites have pop-up ads. For instance, the website of Baidu, China’s top search engine, has a spare design similar to Google’s.

But there are plenty of Chinese news, online-game and even government websites that use relatively intrusive ads: pop-up windows, videos that automatically play in a corner, vertical banners glued to both sides of the website, horizontal banners that drop down to consume the screen for several seconds, and floating boxes that drift across the screen, bounce off its edges and sometimes can’t be closed.

The new rules do deal a blow to pop-up ads. While they are still allowed, companies will be required to provide an “obvious” way to close them.

Pop-up ads thus seem to be a necessary evil, in the MIIT’s book. Users, take note: You still need a browser with a pop-up blocker.

–Owen Fletcher; follow him on Twitter @owenfletcher