Exploring The Gray Zone In Advertising:a Comparative Study Of French And Chinese Regulations On Alcohol Advertisement

"The problem in China:we have censorship. But there is no rigid censorship law. So there are things you can and can’t do, and in between there’s a huge area of gray" said Ian Thubron in an interview in March2012. This "gray zone" has been the source of great confusion for advertisers. Through the comparative analysis of France and China’s advertising regulation systems, and focusing on the controversial product that is alcohol for differences to stand out more evidently, this paper strives to explore the gray zone of advertising regulation of China and to answer questions like:what are the different factors that create the gray zone? What are the differences between France and China, and what do they tell us about China’s own advertising industry and its regulation system?Based on scholar Gao Zhihong’s methology, we will first compare the countries’ social contexts, then we will analyze how the system works (comparison of regulatory systems), followed by how strictly advertisements-notably those about alcohol-are regulated (comparison of statutory provisions) and finally how effectively advertisements are regulated (comparison of regulation enforcement).We conclude that though Chinese alcohol advertising regulation may be less strict than its French equivalent, it still remains less clear. We single out various factors which explain the existence of a larger gray legal zone in Chinese advertising regulation. The first one is maturity of the industry, linked closely with the sophistication of the legal text and its efficient enforcement. With time, this will probably change towards a clearer legal framework, a trend of which one of the signs is the initiative of the adoption of a self-regulation code in2011in China. The second one is a strongly anchored culture of "discretionary power", which severely counters the rule of law, as we will see in the Guhan Yangsheng jiu example. The third one is the structure of the system:the efficiency and sophistication of the advertising reviewing, monitoring and regulation system depends on it. It is also a corollary of the maturity of the industry. As long as the Chinese Advertising Association remains an officiously governmental association, as long as self-regulation and government regulation are the one and same entity, the political agenda will always be taken into account when censoring and so the gray zone will remain very large.