Jan 26, 2007, 7:40 GMT
Beijing - China's ruling Communist Party has banned images and mention of pigs in television advertisements aired over the lunar new year to avoid offending the country's Muslims, an advertising agency said on Friday.
'We were told by the CCTV (China Central Television) censorship team that the CCTV advertising department announced a new regulation on pigs in its internal document,' an executive at the Shanghai-based Mindshare agency told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa by telephone.
The ban also applies to cartoons and traditional paper-cut images of pigs, and to slogans such as 'golden pig brings you fortune' and 'wish you a happy pig year,' the executive said.
He said the decision was taken 'in order to avoid nationality conflicts' and issued by Li Changchun, a top party propaganda official and a member of the party's elite Politburo.
'The regulation only applies to advertisements,' a staff member in the CCTV advertising department said, refusing to answer further questions.
CCTV and other state broadcasters normally run dozens of popular variety shows and other special programmes before and during the one-week national holiday to mark the lunar new year, or Spring Festival.
The Year of the Pig begins on February 18.
China officially has 21 million Muslims among it 1.3 billion people, about half of them from the Hui group which predominates in poor northwestern areas but is spread across the country.
Some 7.5 million Uighurs, most of whom are Muslims, form the largest minority in China's Central Asian region of Xinjiang.
The Communist Party retains control over religious activity and all mosques must register with the Islamic Association.
It protected 'normal religious activities' in its 1982 constitution, after all religion was forcibly suppressed during the communist fundamentalism of the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution.
The government now gives concessions to Muslims and ethnic minorities under its 'one-child' family planning policy and has recruited more officials from minorities.
Local conflicts sometimes erupt between Hui Muslims and the Han Chinese majority and are more common between Uighurs and Han in Xinjiang.
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