Modern Express
December 25, 2009

Since 2000, China Central Television has been releasing its annual list of "economic figures", a "man of the year" award for those who supposedly made the biggest splashes in the business and economics arena during the preceding year. A pool of candidates nominated by an advisory committee will be winnowed down to ten finalists, who will be invited to a live broadcast gala to receive the awards and deliver speeches.

This year's list, announced on December 23rd, includes Sina's CEO Cao Guowei, who in his acceptance speech, to the chagrin of many Chinese Twitter fans, attributed the popularity of microblog in China to Sina. Another nominee Shen Wenrong, chairman of Shazhou Steel, expressed his gratitude to "Reform and Opening-up" policy, without which it would be impossible for him to make his company one of the Fortune 500; Yu Minhong, chairman of China's biggest language training institute New Oriental, reiterated the importance of repetition in foreign language acquisition; Li Shufu, president of domestic car producer Geely, has been basking in the glow of media spotlight recently thanks to Geely's purchase of Volvo from Ford, declares Geely's mission as to "bring Chinese cars to every corner of the world, and let the cars from rest of the world to be found in nowhere of China".

The event is seen by many as a holy grail for entrepreneurs who crave to establish their positive public image. However, recently the credibility of the award was questioned. In a recent Internet post, which made the front page of today's Modern Express, the author pointed out that over a period of 17 days, the candidates received as many as 255 million votes. Among them, one candidate received over nine million votes over a single night. He asked whether the tally has been manipulated.

The skepticism is not unfounded, according to the newspaper article. An Internet search via Baidu yielded a number of unsettling messages, including the following one which was quoted in the report:

"Our team is highly professional. We can crack all kinds of authentication methods, including IP restriction, multi-route detection, verification codes. Our approach doesn't require a proxy and is totally risk-free. We are familiar with all kinds of cheating techniques and can help you with online individual or company ranking, brand ranking, at a low cost; the fee rate varies depending the nature of the e-voting, but you can count on us to always do what's in your best interest."