China Real Time Report

[Reefa]

Thanks to a new crackdown in China, the country’s Supreme People’s Court isn’t looking so supreme these days.

A search for material related to China’s top court on Dangdang.com, an e-commerce site, now shows only a partial version of its name. The word “supreme” –最高, or highest – is instead represented by asterisks.

Blame China’s updated advertising law, which some online are calling the strictest ad law in history. The overhauled law, which kicked in this month, bans the use of superlatives to describe products. That includes terms such as “highest,” “best” or “national level,” a phrase that means top level in Chinese.

The law already banned such terms, but the overhauled version now levies a fine of between 200,000 yuan ($31,466) and 1 million yuan ($157,331). Previously the language on fines was more vague.

“This version of the law emphasizes its importance and implementation. I think that’s why everybody takes this so seriously,” said Yin Wang, ad supervisor for a Shanghai-based Chinese language magazine.

Though it specifies a handful of terms like “highest,” the law doesn’t give a full list of words that can’t be used. That leaves it up to the State Administration of Industry and Commerce, which oversees corporate issues like company registrations and pricing, to rule whether specific words might be violations, Ms. Yin said.

Companies in China and elsewhere often use such superlatives to tout their products, even if the claims can’t be backed up. In the U.S. the practice is legal under a concept called “puffery,” though it has occasionally come back to haunt some companies.

Different companies are handling the new law in different ways. “Dangdang’s technicians are so honest. They even banned the the word ‘highest’ in book titles,” said Li Guoqing, chief executive of E-Commerce China Dangdang, via his verified social media account. Mr. Li added that Dangdang had been fined 500,000 yuan ($78,665) years ago by local authorities for exaggerating in a tea product promotion.

A Dangdang spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.

A search for 最高, or “highest,” on Taobao.com returns a message saying results can’t be displayed.
Taobao.com

Tests by China Real Time on other e-commerce websites like JD.com and Alibaba Group’s Taobao showed that the full name of the Supreme People’s Court showed up in searches. But on Taobao, a search for the word “highest” results in an image of the e-commerce service’s pumpkin-headed mascot with gushing tears and a message saying the results for that word can’t be displayed “according to the relevant laws and rules.” Searches for “best,” “state-level” and “biggest” turned up similar results.

“Alibaba Group follows all laws wherever it conducts business,” said an Alibaba spokesman.

JD.com also didn’t show searches for those words. It also didn’t show results for searches for “forever,” though it displays results when searching for the full name of Forever Bicycles, a Chinese brand. A JD.com spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

–Yang Jie

blogs.wsj.com

[dMog]

yea you cannot lie in courts but you can lie your ass off to sell stuff :s

[straycat19]

yea you cannot lie in courts but you can lie your ass off to sell stuff

Never saw a more naive statement in my life. Obviously you have never testified in court cases.

[dMog]

yea you cannot lie in courts but you can lie your ass off to sell stuff

Never saw a more naive statement in my life. Obviously you have never testified in court cases.

maybe you just do not understand...of course you can lie in court...but it is against the law to do so... you can lie in a infomercial and it is is NOT against the law