Web firms join fight to clean up online porn

Chinese network and technology giants have joined the fight against online pornography.

To remove certain violent and sexual images, Internet companies, especially the search engines, must strengthen their supervision, said Wang Yi, manager of the public affairs department at Baidu, China's leading Internet search provider.

She said Baidu has established a system to monitor websites around-the-clock and will block those suspected of disseminating illegal material.

Baidu, the Chinese equivalent to Google, established a credibility list of websites in March.

"The list aims to clean out unhealthy information online from its roots. We tell netizens whether a website is risky via a label when they search online," Wang said. "We'll also cut down its scores or cancel its credibility certificate if a website is reported by netizens to have problems."

In 2013, Baidu labeled 40 million websites as risky and blocked 23 million of them, according to company statistics. There are about 200 billion websites that can be accessed via Baidu.

"We hope the credibility list can do more to purify the online environment, and we urge website operators to wipe out pornographic information," she added.

Wang Cun, manager of Baidu's corporate marketing department, said the company has also taken measures to guarantee consumers' rights in cooperation with the Ministry of Justice and China Consumers' Association.

It will provide online buyers with compensation if they are cheated by online trading platforms found via Baidu's search engine and can supply evidence, Wang Cun said.

Aside from Baidu, Qihoo 360, one of the country's largest anti-virus technology enterprises, has promoted a new browser product to keep children away from pornography.

"We collect problematic websites - and also seek reports from parents - and block these links when children search them through the browser," said Zhan Yuan, manager in charge of the product.

The company has blocked websites involving obscene and violent information more than 1.9 million times and blacklisted more than 400,000 links, Zhan said.