Bloomberg:

In 2022, the Cyberspace Administration kicked off the Qinglang campaign that removed online content from short videos, live streams, blogs, newsletters, and content feeds created by algorithms. Could you give us more details about what the results of the campaign were? Moreover, going forward, will the Cyberspace Administration focus on similar operations? How will China's digital content space evolve in the future? Thank you. 

Sheng Ronghua:

Thank you for your questions. In recent years, the Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission has fully implemented General Secretary Xi Jinping's important thought on building China's strength in cyberspace, as well as the decisions and plans of the CPC Central Committee. We have upheld the development philosophy of putting people first to continue and deepen the Qinglang campaign addressing prominent online issues of great concern to netizens and the public. We have taken comprehensive measures in the campaign and required website platforms to shoulder primary responsibility. These efforts have improved the online environment, enhanced primary responsibility, and refined details of institutional norms. 

We have improved the online environment. In recent years of the campaign, we have focused on cracking down on illegal information and content of porn, ugliness, weirdness, fakery, vulgarity, extravagance, and gambling through 16 major live-streaming and short video platforms. Since 2022, we have cleaned up more than 2.35 million illegal short videos and punished more than 220,000 illegal anchors and short video accounts, addressing such prominent problems as giving exceptional rewards, making norms and functions ineffective, and conducting malicious marketing. We have also strengthened the management of online users' accounts, regulated the information and content released by self-published media, and guided all website platforms to improve their algorithms. We have also stepped up efforts to address prominent problems, including information silos, algorithm discrimination, and big data discriminatory pricing against existing customers, to safeguard internet users' legitimate rights and interests, and promote the overall development of the online environment.

We have enhanced primary responsibility. Through these years of efforts, we have strengthened supervision by taking comprehensive measures to get website platforms to play an active role in shouldering their responsibility. Website platforms have further supported their primary responsibility, improved management rules, promoted information identification, optimized algorithm model parameters, and cracked down on some illegal and harmful information as well as illegal accounts. Particularly prominent are institutions like Multi-Channel Network (MCN), where the responsibility was unclear in the past, and its regulation is loose. Over these years of regulation, MCN institutions have paid more attention to their accounts' information and content security, increased efforts in content review, and subjected themselves to public supervision. In addition, public accounts and content anchors can release high-quality content and products, becoming a significant force in promoting positive energy. 

We have refined the details of institutional norms. During the governance process, we have worked with relevant departments to elaborate operational and practical rules by fields, links, and scenes. We have issued several regulations, including the Opinions on Further Regulating the Profit Activities of Online Live Streaming for Sound Development, to make the efforts permanent and targeted.

Next, we will focus our work on "three entities" and "three aspects of regulation." Three entities refer to website platforms, information and content producers, and MCN institutions I just mentioned. Website platforms must review the information and content first and manage key products and links well. Information and content producers and MCN institutions must adhere to the correct guidance and comply with the regulation requirements. Those with prominent problems and without effective rectification will be given strict punishment and exposed in groups for warning. We will regulate the settings of functions. We will make an overall regulation of settings of key functions like lists, rewards, and livestreamer "battles" to curb problems and chaos. We will regulate the application of technology, urge the platforms to implement the management regulations on recommendations based on algorithms, and improve the mechanism for human intervention and choice of users to ensure content security through technical standardization. We will regulate chain management. We will strengthen the whole process and whole chain management of information and content to find the root cause of chaos, especially to cut off the chain of interests, to promote the sound development of the industry. In the future, while strengthening regulation, we will pay more attention to developing several brands for the practice of cyber civilization so that the wave of positive energy felt throughout cyberspace continues to build, and the underlying values hold greater appeal than ever before. Thank you.