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The government is pursuing a crackdown on
unwanted material online. Critics say the increasing
restrictions further limit free speech in the one-party
Communist state.
Authorities shut 17 public pages on the mobile social messaging
app Weixin, also known as WeChat in English, as well as 24
websites and 9 channels or columns on websites, the Cyberspace
Administration of China (CAC) said in a statement on its website
(www.cac.gov.cn).
The Weixin accounts were shut down during the past two months,
the state-run news agency Xinhua said.
Some of the other offences listed by CAC include publishing fake
information under the guise of the government or media, and
publishing information related to gambling or fraud.
Jiang Jun, a spokesman for the cyberspace watchdog, said the CAC
would regularly publish a "black list" of violators, according
to the statement.
Last fall, Xinhua said the cyberspace watchdog had closed nearly
1.8 million accounts on social networking and instant messaging
services since launching an anti-pornography campaign earlier in
the year.
In 2014, authorities received almost 11 million reports of what
was described as harmful information online, Xinhua reported
separately on Tuesday.
In November, Chinese officials called for controls on the
Internet to preserve stability.
With a population of 1.4 billion and 632 million people online,
China is a market no one wants to miss out on. But it also has
the world's most sophisticated online censorship system, known
outside the country as the Great Firewall.
It blocks many social media services, such as Twitter, Facebook,
YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and Google, along with many rights
groups sites and some foreign media agencies.
(Reporting by Adam Rose; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
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