Fake BBC Site Owners Angry After Copycatting Exposed

By Cathy Wu

China's copycat culture has a long and notorious history. The latest is a fake BBC website exposed by the Los Angeles Times, which made headlines earlier this morning for blantantly ripping off a site visited by millions each day.

The fake BBC stands for 'Business Broadcast of China,' which shares the same abbreviation with the British Broadcasting Corp. Its operations are based in Hefei, the capital of Anhui province. The domain name is www.bbcnews.com.cn/, while the simplified Chinese version of original BBC should be http://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp.

When the LA Times first exposed the copycat site, it was reported to have similar layout to the original BBC, including the same red header and a nearly identical homepage design.

The original BBC Chinese website.

The fake BBC's website before the exposure.

Articles published on the site took on some surprisingly sensitive issues, among them the Panama Papers. The site was pretty shady about naming its sources, however, with some either vaguely identified or not mentioned at all.

An operations manager at the Business Broadcast of China, when reached by the LA Times via phone, said that any similarities with the BBC's website were a “coincidence.” He said the site went online in late 2014 and attracts up to 5,000 unique views per day.

After the news of the site's copycat tactics went viral, the fake website quickly changed its layout. As of this morning its header was gray and a message on the homepage disclaimed any relationship with the homonymous British website. It also removed nearly all articles, leaving just nine under its China category, all of which lash out at other media outlets for accusing them of copying the BBC.

The fake BBC's website after the exposure.

In an article posted to the site today, the company explained that they used the 'Rubine Lite' Wordpress theme to build the site, which is why the layout may have looked similar to other more famous news sites. (Fair, we suppose, but that doesn't explain why they decided to publish under the 'BBC' name).

The post also called out other media for exposing their copycat behavior, accusing some Taiwanese outlets who reported the news of being “rabid dogs that bite without discrimination” and “flunkies of Western media.”

[Images via Los Angeles Times]

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