China to shut political, social news sites run by websites

Chinese-language newspaper the Beijing News-which routinely parrots the official government line-reported that the Cyberspace Administration of China invoked Article 16 of “Provisions on the Administration of Internet News Information Services”.

Thousands of cyber-police also watch the web and social media, and material deemed politically and socially sensitive is filtered.

Edgy news programmes run by major web portals have been shut down by the authorities in Beijing in the latest round of efforts to restrict the reporting of politics.

China’s chief internet regulator was recently replaced by former Shanghai propaganda chief XU Lin.

China has cracked down on online news media houses. The moves comes ahead of next year’s epochal Communist Party congress.

News outlets in China operate under tight Communist Party control, with censorship and self-censorship common. The meeting is held once every five years to pick a new group of senior leaders.

China’s leading internet portals have been ordered to stop their original news reporting, as President Xi Jinping’s government further tightens its control over the country’s information industry.

Government rules prohibiting the publication of “self-edited” news and information by websites that were not set up by news entities have been widely ignored, with many websites running robust reporting operations.

News of the ban was first publicised in state-owned The Paper, which said several digital news portals had “seriously violated” regulations with their coverage causing “huge negative effects”.

It is unclear whether the regulation will end all original reporting at the websites, where hundreds of millions of Chinese turn for their news.

“In recent years, the situation for online media has significantly worsened”.

While it has been illegal to hire reporters or publish content from autonomous sources as news since 2005, the rule has seldom been enforced.

But Wen said that even in China, with its notorious army of censors, it was hard for the government to control news in a market powered by hundreds of millions of readers hungry for news that goes beyond Communist propaganda.