BEIJING — When the Beijing Olympic Games kicked off two weeks ago with a four-hour spectacular, more than 840 million people in China tuned in, perhaps the largest television audience in history for a single event.

The broadcast was the first in a series of Olympic bonanzas for China Central Television, or CCTV, one of the chief propaganda arms of the Chinese state and perhaps also a new global media titan.

Analysts say global corporations seeking a foothold in this potentially huge market have begun to notice CCTV, whose audience is vastly larger than every major television network in the United States and Europe combined.

So, while NBC is celebrating average prime-time audiences of 29 million viewers in the United States, CCTV is smashing ratings records everywhere. The opening ceremony had an average audience of nearly half a billion people, and 842 million watched at least a minute of it, according to CSM Media Research, based here.

More than 80 percent of Chinese households have tuned in to some broadcasts, guaranteeing the $2 billion company a huge pot of advertising gold.

CCTV paid about $17 million for exclusive broadcast rights in China but could reap $394 million in Olympic advertising revenue, according to Group M, a media company that tracks television advertising revenue here. By comparison, NBC paid $894 million for broadcast rights in the United States and is expected to garner more than $1 billion in ad revenue.

“They’re a TV powerhouse in China,” said Richard Ji, an Internet and media analyst at Morgan Stanley, referring to CCTV. And they are likely only to grow more powerful. “Global brands want to tap into China’s consumer market. So they’ll be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Olympics,” Mr. Ji said.

The company is also a model of how the Communist Party in China manages to keep state-owned companies profitable as it moves the nation toward a market economy with less government influence.

That the biggest corporations in the world are bankrolling that evolution — as well as party propaganda — is one of the ironies of modern China.

CCTV’s 18 channels reach more than a billion viewers. Its advertisers include Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Adidas. It has cut television and marketing deals with the National Basketball Association and IMG Worldwide, the global sports and entertainment giant.

Perhaps the most striking symbol of its ascent is its new corporate headquarters here, a gleaming $700 million architectural landmark designed by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas.

CCTV is this country’s only national television network and is under the direct control of the powerful State Administration for Radio, Film and Television. CCTV journalists travel with the president and politburo leaders; they disseminate government news bulletins and often get approval for “exclusive” interviews with important public figures.

For instance, CCTV was the only media outlet to interview Liu Xiang, the Chinese track star who pulled out of the Games on Monday with a foot injury, guaranteeing he would not face any embarrassing questions.

Surveys by Nielsen Media Research indicate that up to 96 percent of Chinese households with television sets have tuned into some portion of the Olympics, which can be seen on seven different channels operated by CCTV.

The viewership numbers are staggering. A women’s weightlifting contest on Aug. 9 drew 155 million television viewers and the men’s basketball game between the United States and China attracted 170 million. The women’s table tennis gold medal match — won by China — drew 330 million viewers last Sunday, according to CSM, more viewers than the entire population of the United States.

CCTV says that in the first 10 days of the Games, more than 100 million people in China watched streaming video on its Web site, CCTV.com.

“That was part of the idea of having the Games in China — opening new markets for the Olympics,” said Ben Seeley, a spokesman for the International Olympic Committee, which awarded the Games to Beijing in 2001.

Perhaps that desire helped CCTV get a good deal when negotiating broadcast rights in the 1990s — or at least an enviable position. The company acquired the rights through the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union, a consortium of dozens of Asian nations (not including Japan or South Korea). But CCTV is also an instrument of the state, a network of television channels whose news and programming is censored and packaged largely to show the country’s happy, harmonious moments, to inspire pride in the people and, if necessary, unify them against a common enemy.

The mission this summer, however, is simpler: cheer on Team China as it racks up a record haul of gold medals at home.

“All of our planning has been geared toward the scale of our coverage of the Olympics,” said Jiang Heping, executive director of CCTV 5, called the Olympics channel.

For CCTV 5 and its sister channels, that has meant running documentaries about the Olympics, profiles of Chinese and foreign athletes and even primers on sports like fencing and sailing. Advertising rates on CCTV channels have jumped 200 to 400 percent during the Olympics, according to R3, a media research company with offices in Beijing.

By the time the Olympics end on Sunday, CCTV says it will have broadcast 2,900 hours; the NBC networks are planning to broadcast about 1,400 hours of coverage in the United States.

“We’ve got programs looking at high-tech shoes and swimsuits, telling the stories of Olympians, past and present. And a show called ‘Rivals,’ which looks at who’s the No. 1 American, No. 1 Kenyan. We want to cover the games from an international perspective, not just a Chinese perspective,” Mr. Jiang said.

Because of its reach and its monopoly, the network plays a huge role in shaping public opinion. After the huge earthquake in Sichuan Province last spring, CCTV reporters were among the first allowed to report from the scene, beaming images of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao consoling victims and reporting tales of heroic rescue efforts. Images of death and anger over shoddy school construction were censored from news coverage. But government censorship does not seem to hurt the company’s bottom line.

The network’s annual auctions of its prime advertising slots are fiercely competitive, with rates rising 20 to 30 percent each year. This year, CCTV revenue is expected to top $2.5 billion, from about $1 billion in 2002 — a huge sum in a country where the average worker earns less than $200 a month.

“Their revenues look rather small for a company that is a fusion of ABC, CBS and NBC,” Mr. Ji at Morgan Stanley said. “It can get a lot bigger.”

That may be one reason Cleveland-based IMG, which owns and manages sports and entertainment events like Wimbledon and represents athletes like Tiger Woods, is teaming with CCTV to tap China’s growing love affair with professional sports.

Robert Lawrence Kuhn, a Citigroup adviser and partner in the IMG deal with CCTV, said IMG could help commercialize and market China’s huge sports industry.

“Our joint venture would create events and CCTV would broadcast the events,” he said. “It is arguably the world’s largest broadcaster in terms of eyeballs and potential for growth. And they dominate televised sports in China.”

Sports are only part of the story. CCTV reaches 30 million Chinese living overseas. It has broadcasts in English, Spanish and French.

And while American television networks are closing foreign bureaus, CCTV is expanding its global newsgathering presence.

Today, the network can cash in on foreign brands that want to get into China, because foreign broadcasters are shut out. But one day, it could do a lot more, like bring the world to China and China to the world.