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.
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
RSS