A naked Pamela Anderson will beckon from Chinese billboards in a new anti-fur campaign — if the former Baywatch star can get past the censors...

...The posters, featuring the slogan "Give fur the cold shoulder" in English, show the 37-year-old actress topless with her back to the camera and an arm partly hiding her right breast.

An image of falling snow appears above Chinese characters reading "cold shoulders are nothing compared to the pain they feel" and "please don't wear fur."

China's straight-laced media regulators have yet to give the posters a green light, said Jason Baker, a Hong Kong-based spokesman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which is promoting the anti-fur campaign.

"Depending on the censors, they may be concerned about it, but it's very tastefully done," Baker said. "We may end up having to crop (the photo) a bit."

This may be a superb PR stunt directed at an American audience, but it doesn't yet have anything to do with China, and it certainly isn't real news, for these reasons:

1. None of the reports indicate that anyone has actually tried to place the ad anywhere in China.

2. The Chinese media is already full of revealing pictures of Pamela Anderson. The image reproduced above is from state-owned news agency Xinhua's website, and you can find it here, with a story (in Chinese) headlined "Anderson is kissed excitedly by homosexual pop star [Elton John]".

Want more Pamela Anderson on Xinhua?

- Here is Pam promoting her book (!) wearing a T-shirt that reads: "Fuck off I'm with the band".
- Here she is again, trying to save chickens.
- Here is a large photo of her used to illustrate an article headlined "Baywatch actress Pamela Anderson sworn in as US citizen".
- Here she is in a story about the value of a "perfect body" (in Chinese).
- Here she is in an illustrated story about her own clothing brand.
- Here she is in a story (in Chinese) about Marvel comic charcter called 'Striparella' whose pneumatic body is based on the Baywatch babe's.
- Here is a Xinhua Pamela Anderson photo galllery.

The USA Today report is here.
Link via China Herald, who comments that "the campaign might not get the blessing of the censors, also consumers in China's big cities and those in the freezing north would not be impressed by Pamela's call to save the animals."

UPDATE: The China Daily has published an edited version of the AP story about the Pamela anti-fur ad and titled it Alien beauty strips for animal rights in China.