1 billion posts deleted in year-long Internet cleanup in China

BEIJING: Almost one billion pornographic and harmful posts in 2014 have been self-inspected and deleted by Chinese websites in an Internet cleanup operation.

"Authorities also closed down about 2,200 websites and 20 million online forums, blogs and social media accounts that had spread erotic and illegal content," said Ren Xianliang, deputy head of the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC).

During the operation, all domestic gateway websites have well cooperated.

"Among the one billion deleted posts, 220 million were on four leading gateway websites, namely Sina, Sohu, Tencent and Netease. Two major search engines Baidu and Qihoo 360 deleted 130 million posts," state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Under CAC supervision, major websites tightened their internal management, adding more staff and applying new systems to improve internal inspection, he said.

However, misconduct has rebounded since late last year, he admitted, adding that even some major websites posted erotic and disturbing content to appeal to viewers.

The cyberspace management departments of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou today respectively summoned the operators of about 50 major websites, pressing them to step up internal inspection and discipline.

In September last year CAC has closed nearly 1.8 million accounts on social networking and instant messaging services since launching an anti-pornography campaign in April.