San Francisco, Oct 13 (IANS): After facing flak for pulling a Hong Kong protest tracking app from its App Store, Apple has now reportedly urged Apple TV Plus show runners to avoid portraying China negatively.

It also comes amid anger at perceived efforts by US businesses to maintain access to one of the globe's biggest markets by playing along with China's Communist government, CNET reported on Saturday.

Early last year, Apple's head of international content development, Morgan Wandell, and its SVP of internet software and services, Eddy Cue, gave the China-related guidance to some show developers, the report added quoting BuzzFeed News that cited unnamed sources.

The iPhone maker, earlier this week, removed an app called HKmap.live from its iOS App Store, a day after People's Daily, the lead newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, criticised the firm for aiding Hong Kong 'rioters'.

The mapping app reportedly pulled information from Facebook, Telegram and other news streams, to show the location of police, tear gas and protesters in Hong Kong.