China’s online watchdog has launched an investigation into reports of multiple violations at news services run by Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊), Baidu Inc (百度) and Weibo Corp (微博), as the Chinese government continues to tighten scrutiny over Internet content.
The Cyberspace Administration of China yesterday said it has instructed its Beijing and Guangdong branches to look into reports that some of the country’s largest online services are carrying user-generated content laden with “violence, porn, rumors” disruptive to social order.
The watchdog did not specify what actions may be taken, and Tencent and Weibo had no immediate comment on the notice.
Baidu said in a statement the company will cooperate with the Chinese government on removing questionable or “unhealthy” content.
Beijing has applied increasing pressure over Internet media in the run-up to an important Chinese Communist Party next month that is expected to consolidate Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) authority.
Intent on muzzling potential sources of disruptive information, the government has shut livestreaming services and Web sites, tightened regulations governing Internet access, and issued repeated warnings about the need to clean up content through various agencies.
Observers said the enhanced scrutiny is also characteristic of Xi’s administration.
The latest probe centers on three of the country’s largest repositories of online musings, all with hundreds of millions of users: Tencent’s WeChat (微信) messaging service, Weibo’s Twitter-like blog and Baidu’s Tieba (貼吧) forums.
Last month, Beijing scrubbed memorial photographs of democracy advocate Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) from WeChat and Weibo, following the long-imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize-winning writer’s death in the middle of the month.
Liu was an author of Charter 08, a document calling for democracy in China, and Beijing aimed to smother that intellectual legacy.
“The government will conduct such checks every year and I don’t see this having any impact on the long-term development of the company,” said Li Yujie (李玉潔), an analyst with RHB Research Institute Sdn in Hong Kong. “People use WeChat and Weibo not for such illegal information, so I don’t think this probe will affect the companies.”
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