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Earlier in August, a new way to promote companies' products gained overwhelming popularity.
Some vendors on Taobao, China's major e-commerce website, announced the availability of advertising services for personalized films featuring African children. In them, children hold a board and shout out promotional words for the product or company being advertised.
On Aug 17, Taobao quietly removed these controversial vendors, following a growingly intense outcry from Chinese citizens. Many said they would boycott the service or product, noting that such practices are "exploitation and disrespectful".
Exploitation, or charity activity?
The video clips are generally limited to 20 seconds, each costing about 150 yuan. The price was soon raised to as high as 200 yuan.
Some Taobao vendors labeled these videos as "charity activity", saying most of the money goes to the children while they only get about 30 yuan.
However, on Aug 6, Beijing Youth Daily looked into the advertising business. An anonymous source told reporters that a broker responsible for filming could receive about 100 orders a day, each with a profit of around 100 yuan.
He also admitted that the lion's share went to brokers and vendors online.
The children got very little money from shooting such ads. Most of them just get some snacks or stationary as rewards.
A win-win relationship,
or a violation of law?
Although the market has recently expanded to filming blessing and apology videos, there is a large portion of Chinese enterprises that purchase such advertisements to help promote their products.
Concerns have been raised that many of the adverts constitute a breach of China's advertisement laws.
According to the second chapter of the Advertisement Law of China, words such as "national-level", "the most" and "the best" are not allowed in advertising.
However, a large number of these videos contain inappropriate wording and bombastic slogans, such as "best brand ever known by Africans". Some even have pornographic messages on them.
Alibaba, which owns Taobao, said it took actions to remove these vendors.
In a statement to the BBC, it said, "We have been made aware of these listings which are posted by third-party sellers on the Taobao marketplace, and we have taken actions to remove them and will continue to do so in future."
