‘Healthy, positive, correct’: China’s censorship machine tightens its grip on online literature

Name: How China censors the internet
Uploaded: 2020-06-16T12:50:05.000Z
Duration: 2 min 33 s
Description: How China censors the internet

Local governments told to exert greater control over content that is already screened for politically sensitive or pornographic words

Writers of fiction will be ordered to ‘abide by public order and morals’, and required to register their real identities

Reading Time:3 minutes

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The Chinese government has said readers of web literature must be “correctly guided”. Photo: EPA-EFE

Mandy Zuo

Published: 8:50pm, 16 Jun 2020Updated: 1:11am, 17 Jun 2020

China has announced tightened controls on its booming internet literature industry to force online publications to reflect government-approved values and quality standards.

The authorities are to impose stricter censorship on online literature to guarantee it “correctly guides public opinion” and is “healthy and positive”, state news agency Xinhua reported on Monday.

Quoting a directive issued by the General Administration of Press and Publication, it said the government wanted higher-quality works and would control the total number of online literary publications, which are supported by a readership larger than the US population.

Authors would need to register with publishing platforms under their real names, and readers’ comments would be more carefully censored, Xinhua said.

02:33

How China censors the internet

The directive was issued to local governments’ publication bureaus but not released to the public.

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