China launches campaign to clean up websites targeting minors

The Cyberspace Administration of China announced to start a two-month campaign to clean up websites that aim at users under the age of 18. The internet watchdog of China informed about the campaign on July 13 on its website.

The Cyberspace Administration also informed that the regulator intends to strictly control actions and information that induce minors to carry out behaviors that have value-oriented problems such as worshipping money or chasing entertainment stars with no limits.

About the campaign:

As informed by the Cyberspace Administration of China, under the launched campaign, the regulator will look at the content on online learning websites as well as the ones that have the live streaming or instant messaging tools that aim at minors. The step will promote a clean and healthy online environment. 

Along with it, android applications that offer quick part-time jobs for easy money, entertainment will also be checked by the regulatory body.  

The watchdog also informed that it had ordered the people in charge of the Xueersi Online School app which is a unit of TAL Education Group, to clean up the app’s low brow content, after it found issues with its articles and videos.

China’s policy on online content:

China has extremely stringent rules on content ranging from movies to video games to music. The government holds the right to censor anything that it believes violates the core socialist values.

In the past as well, the country had imposed limits on online play time for the young users as the reports of the rising game addiction among the children were coming out.  

China’s Clean Up Internet Campaign:

China had also launched a campaign to clean up its internet earlier in May 2020. The rectification effort was launched by the Cyberspace Administration, the public security bureau, the information technology ministry, and the market regulator of China.

Under the campaign, there was apparent censorship by the authorities that had blocked foreign media websites and had shut down the domestic accounts of Social media.

The campaign will also expose and punish the websites for the ‘illegal and criminal actions’ who fail to ‘fulfill their obligations’ to take safety measures or are involved in the theft of the personal information. This campaign is scheduled to run until the end of 2020.