SHANGHAI: Chinese police have shut down 34,000 online accounts and punished more than 6,300 people for allegedly spreading rumours as part of a crackdown launched in April, state media reported on Friday.

Police “severely cracked down on illegal and criminal activities such as fabricating false information about police, epidemics, dangers and disasters,” state broadcaster CCTV said on Friday.

“So far, public security organs across the country have investigated more than 4,800 online rumour cases, investigated and handled in accordance to the law more than 6,300 people who spread rumours, and shut down 34,000 illegal accounts,” CCTV said, without specifying the type of accounts targeted.

Curbs also planned to check obsessive ‘gaming behaviour’ among citizens

CCTV said police also deleted 27,000 pieces of information and blocked more than 500 social accounts for alleged cyberbullying in the time since the “Clean Net” campaign began in April.

Police have designated 2024 as “a year of special action to combat online rumours”, according to the Chinese state broadcaster.

New gaming curbs

Separately, Beijing also announced another set of planned curbs on the amount of time and money that people can spend gaming online, triggering a share market sell-off in some of the nation’s biggest tech giants worth billions of dollars.

The draft restrictions published online by the government regulator say they are aimed at limiting in-game purchases and preventing obsessive gaming behaviour.

They also reiterate a ban on “forbidden online game content... that endangers national unity” and “endangers national security or harms national reputation and interests”.

The news sent shares in tech giants tumbling and wiped tens of billions of dollars off their value, with industry leader Tencent tanking more than 12 per cent in Hong Kong by the close.

Beijing first moved against the gaming sector in 2021 as part of a sprawling crackdown on Big Tech, including a strict cap on the amount of time children could spend playing online. An end to a freeze in gaming licences had raised hopes that the focus on the industry had subsided.

The country’s top gaming industry body announced last year that China had “solved” the issue of youth video game addiction.

Published in Dawn, December 23rd, 2023