One of China’s biggest Internet portals has been accused of “rumor-mongering” and other offenses by the authorities as Beijing furthers its online clampdown.
In a statement posted on its Web site late on Monday, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said that authorities met with representatives of Netease to discuss “problems” in the company’s operations.
The Internet firm, whose offerings include online games, education and e-mail services, was accused of “illegally republishing news and information, spreading pornography, rumor-mongering and other issues.”
No details were provided on the alleged violations.
However, Netease has its origins in freewheeling Guangdong Province, and users say that the comments sections on its news stories are less strictly censored than those of other firms.
A Netease official said that the company would work to “actively spread positive energy and provide news services in strict accordance with the law,” the statement said.
The move appears to be the latest effort by the Chinese Communist Party to exert control over China’s online space.
Beijing maintains a tight grip on information, with the media controlled by the government and social networks subject to heavy censorship.
Hundreds of bloggers and journalists have since 2013 been rounded up in a government-backed campaign against “Internet rumors.”
In October last year, China’s top court announced that it was putting pressure on Internet service providers to provide the personal details of Web users suspected of “rights violations.”
And in recent weeks, authorities have cracked down on virtual private networks, which allow Internet users in China to scale the country’s vast censorship apparatus.
The CAC said that Internet authorities in Beijing have also recently called in the heads of other top Chinese Internet firms, including Sina, Sohu and Baidu, and urged them to “take corrective measures.”
“Some Web sites take a lax attitude towards content published for the sake of profit and sometimes spread pornography, vulgar content and bad information, which has disrupted the orderly flow of online information and damaged the public interest,” the CAC statement said.
In an editorial yesterday, the state-run Global Times newspaper lashed out against “speculative reports” in Chinese media, saying some rumors circulated on social networking sites have proved to be “maliciously cooked up.”
The editorial came after the Southern Weekly newspaper apologized for including “false information” in a report that Anbang Insurance Group, a prominent Chinese company, had benefited from its ties to a powerful political family.
“The media should remain cautious when reporting on the anti-corruption campaign,” the Global Times wrote.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.