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.
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
Chizuko Kimura has become the first female sushi chef in the world to win a Michelin star, fulfilling a promise she made to her dying husband to continue his legacy. The 54-year-old Japanese chef regained the Michelin star her late husband, Shunei Kimura, won three years ago for their Sushi Shunei restaurant in Paris. For Shunei Kimura, the star was a dream come true. However, the joy was short-lived. He died from cancer just three months later in June 2022. He was 65. The following year, the restaurant in the heart of Montmartre lost its star rating. Chizuko Kimura insisted that the new star is still down
While China’s leaders use their economic and political might to fight US President Donald Trump’s trade war “to the end,” its army of social media soldiers are embarking on a more humorous campaign online. Trump’s tariff blitz has seen Washington and Beijing impose eye-watering duties on imports from the other, fanning a standoff between the economic superpowers that has sparked global recession fears and sent markets into a tailspin. Trump says his policy is a response to years of being “ripped off” by other countries and aims to bring manufacturing to the US, forcing companies to employ US workers. However, China’s online warriors
RSS