A very interesting post has appeared today on danwei.org. Apparently, a good 40% of Chinese TV’s brand names and logos are bluntly violating the law.

In fact, art 14 of the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language states that Chinese broadcasters are required to use Mandarin Chinese and simplified characters unless explicitly allowed to do otherwise. Which means that also CCTV and BTV logos, to name a couple of famous TV stations, are not in line with national regulations and need to be changed.

The Ministry of Education has stated very clearly that all the TV stations using English language abbreviation will need to revise their brand name and logo. And to give the good example, Ministry of Education operated China Educational TV, which used to go by CETV has recently become中国教育1 and 中国教育3.

Will others follow?

The rule is certainly not new - it actually dates back to 2001 - but famous TV stations seem to have been hard of hearing. For instance, CCTV had already manifested its unwillingness to change a 50 years old brand that has been among the world's top 500 brands for two years running. And we also remember something similar concerning retail stores displaying signs, accused in a 2007 article published on Sina.com.cn of bearing outlaw’s English written names…but those signs are still there, aren’t they?