China will shut down or punish dozens of video-sharing Web sites for carrying content deemed pornographic, violent or a threat to national security under rules that tighten Internet controls, a regulator said yesterday.
Chinese Web surfers have been blocked from seeing foreign sites -- including YouTube.com -- with video about protests in Tibet, but the new order did not mention the demonstrations or China's security crackdown.
One of China's most popular video-sharing sites, Tudou.com (
Rules that took effect on Jan. 31 ban online video that involves national secrets, hurts the reputation of China, disrupts social stability or promotes pornography. Web sites are required to delete and report such content.
Regulators have ordered 25 Web sites to shut down and will punish 32 others following a two-month investigation, the SARFT said on its Web site. It gave no details of penalties. Phone calls to SARFT were not answered.
A Tudou.com vice president, Dan Brody, said the site received a warning and is upgrading its systems. He declined further comment.
Chinese regulators see video-sharing as a promising industry and have tried to strike a balance between enforcing censorship and letting fast-growing sites compete for visitors.
The government announced in December that all video-sharing sites had to be state-owned. It backed off following warnings that state ownership would stifle the industry and said any properly licensed company already operating could continue.
Companies knew the penalties were coming, and they do not appear to be connected to efforts to keep Web surfers from seeing the protests in Tibet, said Duncan Clark, managing director of BDA China Ltd, a Beijing consulting firm.
The Internet has quickly grown to become a mass medium in a country where the government owns all newspapers and broadcasters and enforces the ruling Chinese Communist Party's censorship guidelines. Some sites say they get 100 million visitors a day, an audience that rivals that of the biggest state television channels.
"It's niche no longer, so the party takes the view that it's mass media, so it has to be subject to the same controls," Clark said.
Chinese Web surfers have been blocked from seeing YouTube after video about the Tibet protests appeared on the popular US site.
Clark said Chinese sites are "on this tightrope," trying to carry eye-catching content without risking government sanctions and scaring off foreign investors.
"You kind of want to be a little bit the bad boy, but ultimately the government can shut you down," he said.
Clark called Tudou.com "the most edgy" of major Chinese video-sharing Web sites.
SARFT said most of the Web sites that were punished showed pornography or violence, or broadcast movies or documentaries that "endangered national security and national interest."
Some of the 25 sites that were told to shut down were the video-sharing sections of Internet forums.
China has 210 million Internet users and says it expects to surpass the US this year as the biggest population of Internet users.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure
RSS