The heads of China’s largest technology companies have endorsed Beijing’s aim to intensify controls of online social media, pledging to “stop the spread of harmful information” on the Internet, Xinhua news agency said yesterday.
About 10 top executives, including Sina Corp’s Charles Chao (趙廣民), Baidu’s Robin Li (李彥宏) and Alibaba’s Jack Ma (馬雲), participated in the three-day discussion that ended on Saturday in Beijing hosted by the State Internet Information Office, one of the country’s Internet regulators, Xinhua said.
China’s Internet companies and Internet operators have “reached a common agreement” that they would “conscientiously safeguard the broadcasting of positive messages online,” the report said, and “Resolutely curb the spread of rumors online, online pornography, Internet fraud and the illegal spread of harmful information on the Internet.”
The meeting was presided over by Wang Chen (王晨), director of the State Council Information Office, the government’s propaganda and information arm.
Chinese Minister of Industry and Information Technology Miao Wei (苗圩) said Internet companies must increase their investment in “tracking surveillance.”
Late last month, Beijing vowed to strengthen Internet administration and promote content acceptable to the Chinese Communist Party, according to a communique of a recent party leadership conclave published in the official People’s Daily.
The announcement from the party meeting builds on a stream of warnings in state media that has shown that Beijing is nervous about the booming microblogs, called weibo in Chinese, and their potential to tear the seams of censorship and controls.
The business impact is likely to be muted, because investors have already taken into account growing official scrutiny of Chinese Internet companies, analysts said.
Indonesia yesterday began enforcing its newly ratified penal code, replacing a Dutch-era criminal law that had governed the country for more than 80 years and marking a major shift in its legal landscape. Since proclaiming independence in 1945, the Southeast Asian country had continued to operate under a colonial framework widely criticized as outdated and misaligned with Indonesia’s social values. Efforts to revise the code stalled for decades as lawmakers debated how to balance human rights, religious norms and local traditions in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. The 345-page Indonesian Penal Code, known as the KUHP, was passed in 2022. It
‘DISRESPECTFUL’: Katie Miller, the wife of Trump’s most influential adviser, drew ire by posting an image of Greenland in the colors of the US flag, captioning it ‘SOON’ US President Donald Trump on Sunday doubled down on his claim that Greenland should become part of the US, despite calls by the Danish prime minister to stop “threatening” the territory. Washington’s military intervention in Venezuela has reignited fears for Greenland, which Trump has repeatedly said he wants to annex, given its strategic location in the arctic. While aboard Air Force One en route to Washington, Trump reiterated the goal. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it,” he said in response to a reporter’s question. “We’ll worry about Greenland in
PERILOUS JOURNEY: Over just a matter of days last month, about 1,600 Afghans who were at risk of perishing due to the cold weather were rescued in the mountains Habibullah set off from his home in western Afghanistan determined to find work in Iran, only for the 15-year-old to freeze to death while walking across the mountainous frontier. “He was forced to go, to bring food for the family,” his mother, Mah Jan, said at her mud home in Ghunjan village. “We have no food to eat, we have no clothes to wear. The house in which I live has no electricity, no water. I have no proper window, nothing to burn for heating,” she added, clutching a photograph of her son. Habibullah was one of at least 18 migrants who died
Russia early yesterday bombarded Ukraine, killing two people in the Kyiv region, authorities said on the eve of a diplomatic summit in France. A nationwide siren was issued just after midnight, while Ukraine’s military said air defenses were operating in several places. In the capital, a private medical facility caught fire as a result of the Russian strikes, killing one person and wounding three others, the State Emergency Service of Kyiv said. It released images of rescuers removing people on stretchers from a gutted building. Another pre-dawn attack on the neighboring city of Fastiv killed one man in his 70s, Kyiv Governor Mykola
RSS