Firstly, advertising in China should obey the Advertisement Law of the People’s Republic of China. For example, the advertisement should not use claims of relative superiority by one brand over another, or carry information of racial, religious or sex discrimination, or harm the social public interests, etc. Any advertising that violates the law is not acceptable in China.
Besides those explicit prohibitions of the law, the advertising would not be accepted in China if it shows violations of or disrespect to Chinese customs or social values either in an explicit or implicit way as Chinese people are so proud of and would like to defend their customs and culture. Whether it is disrespectful might be hard to define under some circumstances, but it’s better and safer if advertisers in China do not take risks of testing people’s thresholds of perception towards those subliminal and potentially offensive messages made either unwittingly or intentionally.
In addition to social values, advertisers in China need to be careful to avoid challenging the nationalism among people. Because of the country’s culture and history, its people display a strong nationalist sensibility. The ads which are conflicted with those people’s nationalist sensibility would attract their particular resentment. The confliction is not only demonstrated in the content of the ads, but also in the choice of spokesmen or endorsers. An example of this is that Sharon Stone’s unpitiful speech about the disastrous earthquake happened in China infuriated Chinese people, which made Christian Dior drop her ads in China. Advertising in China should know how to deal with nationalism. Smart advertisers would make use of it to invoke positive nationalism to appeal to Chinese customers rather than negative feelings which will arouse dislikes and even boycotts of their products and brands.
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