Censors in China have shut down a provincial website of Tencent Holdings Ltd. (700), owned by the country’s third-richest man, according to a government notice.
The website (xian.qq.com) will be closed for seven days for “lack of control on contents” and “permitting the spread of vicious and harmful information,” according to a notice by the Shaanxi Internet Information Office on the local government’s news portal. An official at the office confirmed the ban and declined to provide further details. Calls to Tencent Holdings head office in Shenzhen and its local website in Xi’an went unanswered on Sunday.
The website, known as Daqin, provides local news and information to 15 million users in the northern province of Shaanxi. The closure of Daqin was part of a campaign by the Shaanxi Internet Information Office in “cleaning up cyberspace and protecting legal rights of citizens,” targeting “terrorism,” “political rumors” as well as “fake journalists,” according to the notice.
China has blocked foreign Internet companies including Google, Twitter and Facebook. Authorities have stepped up a crackdown on Internet content since President Xi Jinping assumed office in 2012.
The crackdown has put pressure on Chinese companies including Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Weibo Corp. (WB), which are required by the government to help censor content. At the same time, these local websites can still be punished for letting some unwanted information appear online.
To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Xin Zhou in Beijing at xzhou68@bloomberg.net; Penny Peng in Beijing at ppeng18@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Malcolm Scott at mscott23@bloomberg.net Andrew Monahan
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