China launches campaign against online rumours

BEIJING: China’s cyberspace watchdog said on Saturday it would launch a three-month campaign to clear up “rumours and false information involving major meetings”, just weeks before the ruling Communist Party holds its five-yearly congress.

General Secretary Xi Jinping is poised to secure a historic third leadership term at the congress, which is due to start on Oct 16.

The weeks immediately preceding this politically sensitive event are usually busy periods for the country’s sprawling public security and online police apparatus, tasked with ensuring stability at all costs.

While the congress was not mentioned in the announcement on Friday, the first “work task” of the campaign was to deal “strictly and quickly” with “rumours and false information involving major meetings, important events, and important policy announcements,” according to a statement published on the official WeChat account of the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC).

Xi is all but guaranteed to secure a third term as party general secretary, which will break a norm adhered to by his two predecessors to step down after 10 years, or two full terms.

The CAC, which wields outsize influence in deciding what gets taken down or promoted on China’s highly-censored Internet, said that the campaign targeting online rumours would be “guided by General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important thoughts on a strong cyberspace”.