In China, it’s the Year Of The P-P-P-Pig!
Yay! Right?
Not in China. According to this detailed WSJ report, the Chinese government is systematically censoring all mentions of pig and pig images — putting Western advertisers in a mad editing scramble:
SHANGHAI — Next month, China will ring in the Year of the Pig. Nestlé SA planned to celebrate with TV ads featuring a smiling cartoon pig. “Happy new pig year,” the ads said.
This week, China Central Television, the national state-run TV network, banned Nestlé’s ad — and all images and spoken references to the animal in commercials, including those tied to the Lunar New Year, China’s biggest holiday.
The intent: to avoid offending Muslims, who consider pigs unclean. “China is a multiethnic country,” the network’s ad department said in a notice sent to ad agencies late Tuesday. “To show respect to Islam, and upon guidance from higher levels of the government, CCTV will keep any ‘pig’ images off the TV screen.”
Suddenly, companies reaching out to China’s booming consumer market have a pig problem. The edict has sent Nestlé and others scrambling to adapt to the last-minute rule change, altering spots that had included pigs.
Nestlé is now figuring out what to do with its ads, says its media-buying company MindShare, a unit of WPP Group. “We act in line with any requests that we receive from the authorities” about the content of ads, says Francois-Xavier Perroud, a spokesman for Nestlé.
Coca-Cola is pulling its pig ads too.
What amazes me about this is it isn’t even mandated by the Koran, which forbids Muslims to eat pork.
Islamic leaders are usually quick to denounce any and all misinterpretations and mischaracterizations of Islam and the Koran. So why aren’t they speaking up?
Until they denounce the war on pig images, I’ll have to assume Allah doesn’t just hate pork, he hates Porky himself!
Not to b-b-butt in, but shouldn’t the rule be “hate the pork but love the pig”?
UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post! Welcome all!
And Happy New Year — including all you pig lovers out there!
Comments are always appreciated, and feel free to look around.
MORE: I should stress that the anti-pig campaign (as the WSJ article points out) involves television right now. How far it will go is not entirely clear:
The policy shift offers a window on the inner workings of China’s governmental machinery, known for its surprise edicts and abrupt shifts in regulation. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the ban applies just to ads or to all TV content. And some analysts said the government could still reverse itself, or offer exceptions to the ban.
I suspect the targets right now are mainly the big Western advertisers.
Are the Piglet stamps that had already been printed safe? It’s too early to tell. Pigs are an important part of Chinese culture, and while this is speculation, I think the government might be very hesitant to issue unenforceable edicts. But television is under state control, and Western advertisers are an easy target.
AND MORE: Is there a double standard in China where it comes to cultural sensitivities? Are some animals more offensive than others? Or does it depend on who’s offended?
The reason I bring this up is because in 2004, China celebrated the Year of the Monkey, despite the fact that this forced American blogger Frank J. to spend the year in a state of terror.
Comments
32 responses to “The year that dare not speak its name?”
When the belligerent Chinese government kowtows to the Muslims *at the expense of offending its own people and culture*, you know our dhimmitude is pretty much complete.
I wonder what prompted this – undisclosed threats, perhaps?
Methinks it was undisclosed threats of losing lots of business from Islamic regimes.
Nearly spewed my coffee when I saw your “That’s Allah Folks!” graphic!
LOL!!! Thanks for making my day!
Last time I checked, the Chinese calendar has been around far, far longer than Islam. How about a little respect FROM Muslims – oh sorry, yeah I forgot, one-way street and all that. Which way is mecca again…
Why don’t we just cut to the end game now and save everyone a lot of bloodshed, grief and horror? Run up the white flag, submit to Islam, put this nation and all the others under Shari’a., and do whatever Iran wants? Viewed from the point we are reaching now, that’s where we are headed anyway.
I call faulty research on this. The Chinese government just issued its “Year of the Pig” postage stamps (for image, see: http://news.cctv.com/financial/20070105/106213.shtml ).
The year of the pig has also been mentioned in a lot of press – it is a particularly auspicious year to get married in, for one. As soon as I remember (from my time in China) what the Chinese for “Nestle” is, I’ll have to go Google it and see what’s up with the pulled ad. But there is defintely no general ban on pig year paraphernalia.
China needs to buy lots of oil and muslim countries have lots of oil to sell … if the Vatican was sitting on top of the world’s biggest oil field China would become catholic in a heartbeat.
Hmm. Unreported unrest among China’s Muslim population? Maybe they’re trying to avoid giving agitators an excuse to make trouble. Much good it may do them.
Could it be that the Chinese government doesn’t care, but all of these multinational companies are afraid of being beheaded by some jihadi nutjob?
Some official didn’t get paid in time. That’s all, folks.
There is unrest among Muslims in the far west, and China has not been placating them. Not at all.
All the Muslims I know are quite fond of pigs (one decorated her little boys room with Piglet & Pooh images)–the other saw Babe 3 times! They like to tease us pig eaters for being “savages” for eating such smart endearing critters.
After all, China doesn’t want to inflame their best weapons customers….
I assume this means an end to the year of the dog as well.
Time to whip out theElmer Fudd Koran
This is all sillyness.Why would the most popularist country in the world bow down to such a one minded mob of terriosts. Just silly. As a passive person I say Be and Let Be.If you dont like what I do DON’T LOOK
You know, the pig is unclean in Judaism, too. Very, very not kosher. But do you see the Chinese government give half a damn about Jewish opinion? No, you don’t. And it’s Jews who keep Chinese restaurants in business.
For those of you who can’t read the WSJ story, there are bigger excerpts here.
Meredith, the piglet stamps had already been made; it seems this latest ban on ads happened quite suddenly. There’s more in the article, and while the ban applies to all images in commercials, it’s not clear how far it goes:
Here’s more from the WSJ:
“The policy shift offers a window on the inner workings of China’s governmental machinery, known for its surprise edicts and abrupt shifts in regulation. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the ban applies just to ads or to all TV content. And some analysts said the government could still reverse itself, or offer exceptions to the ban.”
I suspect the targets right now are mainly the big Western advertisers.
But so far, Piglet seems unaffected:
“Even as CCTV keeps pigs off the air, images of the animal are proliferating in stores as well as in print ads and billboards in anticipation of the New Year holiday. Starbucks Corp. shops in China are selling bright red pig-shaped piggy banks emblazoned with the chain’s name, as well as stuffed-animal pigs.
“Walt Disney Co., which is making a major push into China after opening a theme park in Hong Kong, is building its marketing efforts for the year around Piglet, Winnie the Pooh’s cartoon sidekick. The company says that market research into Chinese culture and traditions led them to prioritize Piglet, who is a lesser character in other markets. “Piglet will be Disney’s most eye-catching image throughout 2007 in China,” said the company in a statement before the ban. China’s postal service has also launched “Year of Piglet” stamps surrounded by images of the character. Disney had no comment on the ban.
Although it’s obviously significant what CCTV does, it is not the arbiter of Han (ethnic majority, non-Muslim) Chinese culture, and certainly not of the culutures of the numerous non-muslim ethnic minorities in China.
Plus, advertisers in the U.S. will pull ads that only potentially offend certain minority groups. That’s not “waving a white flag” for pete’s sake. That’s capitalism. This is the same phenomenon, adjusted for the communist setting – not cultural revisionism.
Any hysteria over this article is probably overblown.
You have really scaped the bottom of the barrel in terms of your reasoning. If you knew anything about Islam (other than “it’s bad”) you would know that pork is forbidden because pigs are unclean (which is actually a carryover from kosher law). So Muslin can’t own pigs, they can’t even be around pigs: your “hate the pork but love the pig” betrays your absolute ignorance (which is amply obvious in any case).
Frito Pundito,
You know what? Who the hell cares?
Islam and moslems do things that the majortiy of people on the face of this planet find offensive in one form or another every damn day and do they give a damn about it? Oh hell no!
ALL that counts is if THEY find something “offensive”. Well, I got news for them. One of these days (and it will be sooner then they think at the rate they are going) they are going to really have something to whine about. Why? because regular people have just about reached the Popeye point with these brats. And you know what happens to a spoiled brat if they throw one too many temper tantrums? That is right-they get spanked. And there will not be a damned thing the Liberal elitiests in government or their propaganda tools in the media can do about it. As the old saying goes-“No body, no victim. No victim, no witnesses=no crime.”
If you knew anything about Islam
“Humor. It is a difficult concept.”
Eric – To the best of my knowledge, the stamps have not been recalled, though people have been warned not to put them on packages to send them to Muslim countries.
Beyond that, I checked 10 minutes ago, and the CCTV website is running a Samsung ad featuring a cartoon pig (it was on the New Year’s page). Similar pig graphics are on Sina. So frankly, I don’t buy it. This is not your ordinary year of the pig – it’s a golden year of the pig, and that only happens once every 60 years. There is no way there will be no pig images in China this year, in deference to potentially offended Muslims. There might have been a stop to some ads, but I can’t help but wonder what else is at play here.
Frito, I don’t think your complaint about my “absolute ignorance (which is amply obvious in any case)” is well founded as we are not talking about being near pigs; just looking at pictures.
According to a report from the BBC’s Kevin Bocquet:
Then there’s this old report:
Making accusations of “absolute ignorance” is a pretty strong charge, and I don’t think it helps your argument.
I haven’t seen any unrest amongst the muslims here in China. Well, except when I try to bargain them down too far on nut cake.
The big muslim fast food chain here serves beer.
“My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking this post! Welcome all!”
It seems my just penned theory on how to increase blog traffic is bang on. Talk about how Muslims are baaaad, and big bloggers like Malkin and her ilk will link.
Saskboy, beyond the apparent failure of an explanation that the Koran does not condemn pig pictures (which really isn’t bad; just an omission) I don’t think any Muslims did anything bad here. My intent was to ridicule Chinese censorship.
But now that I see you’re with “The Alliance of Free Blogs” (the logo and link are on your blogroll), I’ll take your apparent resentment of the “Puppyblender” with a grain of salt.
The link to the Alliance is just an ironic twist in my blogroll. It makes reading my Technorati page more interesting, that’s for sure, even though I don’t agree with more than a fraction of what is written by the members.
I know how it is. Check out some of my links. Oliver Willis! Eschaton! Orcinus!
Egad!
I’d only heard of Eschaton Atrios before.
It’s probably for the best that there’s some ‘cross pollination’ in blogrolls anyway, it helps keep communication between ‘camps’ going.
A totalitarian regime trying not to offend?
AS IF!
Hmm. Trackback doesn’t seem to have taken so here’s a Manual Trackback?.
Note that fundy Muslims also consider dogs to be unclean, so it should be expected that this will happen again in the Year of the Dog.