China’s top internet regulator said Tuesday it would take action against ByteDance-owned news app Jinri Toutiao and Alibaba’s internet browser company UCWeb for allegedly displaying harmful content, a day after announcing a two-month social media crackdown.

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) vowed on Monday to combat content containing “malicious incitement of conflict” and “negative outlooks on life such as world-weariness”.

Beijing requires social media companies to moderate content on their platforms, with posts strictly controlled to avoid anything deemed to be too subversive, vulgar, pornographic or generally harmful.

The CAC had already announced penalties this month against three popular digital platforms— micro-blogging platform Weibo, short video app Kuaishou and Instagram-like Xiaohongshu—for allegedly neglecting content management duties.

Authorities have not specified what punitive actions are being taken against those platforms.

The CAC said on Tuesday that measures taken against news aggregator app Toutiao included “summoning the company for a meeting, ordering rectification within a specified time limit, issuing a warning, and strictly dealing with those responsible”.

The platform had failed to fulfil its primary responsibility of managing information content and allowed “harmful content” to appear on the main section of its trending search list, “thereby damaging the online ecosystem”, the statement said.

It gave no further details about the content type or punishments.

“Internet regulators will continue to focus on prominent illegal and non-compliant activities that undermine the online ecosystem,” the CAC added.

In a separate statement on Tuesday, the CAC said it would take similar measures against UCWeb after the Alibaba-owned platform displayed entries relating to “extremely sensitive and malicious” events and topics such as “online violence and the privacy of minors”.

The two-month campaign announced on Monday by the CAC aims “to regulate the malicious incitement of conflict and the promotion of violence and vicious currents”, the CAC said.

The statement then listed specific online issues authorities hope to tackle in the crackdown, including “exploiting social hot spots to forcibly associate identity, region or gender with other information, stigmatising and hyping them”.

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Sheikh has passed away, the Saudi News Agency reported on Tuesday. 

Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman offered their condolences to his family, the Saudi people, and the Islamic world.

According to Saudi media, the funeral prayer of Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Sheikh will be held after Asr prayer at the Imam Turki bin Abdullah Mosque in Riyadh.

“With the passing of Al-Sheikh, Saudi Arabia and the Islamic world have lost a distinguished scholar who made significant contributions to the service of Islam and Muslims,” the Royal Court stated.

Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Sheikh was appointed as Saudi Grand Mufti by King Fahd in 1999 as the successor of Sheikh Abdul Aziz Ibn Baz.

Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Sheikh was also the president of the Council of Senior Scholars and had also performed the duties of delivering the Hajj sermons.

Furthermore, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, has ordered that his funeral prayers in absentia also be performed at the Grand Mosque in Makkah, the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah, and in all mosques across the Kingdom. 

• US delegation urges deeper Beijing-Washington dialogue.
• China’s defence minister calls to remove disruptive factors.
• TikTok, tariffs are also on the discussion agenda.

BEIJING: The leader of a US congressional delegation to China warned Tuesday of the “risk of a misunderstanding” between the two countries’ militaries as advances in defence technology move at breakneck speed.

Adam Smith, the most senior Democrat on Washington’s Armed Services Committee, told journalists in Beijing that China needs to talk more about its military with other global powers “for basic de-confliction”.

“We’ve seen this with our ships, our planes, their ships, their planes coming entirely too close to one another,” he said at a news conference at the US Embassy.

“We need to have a better conversation about de-conflicting those things.”

The four-person delegation also includes other members of the same Armed Services Committee — Democrats Ro Khanna and Chrissy Houlahan — as well as Republican congressman Michael Baumgartner, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

The group on Monday met Chinese Defence Minister Dong Jun, with whom they talked about the importance of “working through our differences” and more candid dialogue, according to a statement from the US side.

Dong called on the visitors to “remove disruptive and restrictive factors” between them, China’s Xinhua state news agency reported.

Speaking on Tuesday alongside the other lawmakers and the US Ambassador to China, David Perdue, Smith said: “AI and drone warfare and cyber and space is moving so rapidly and innovation is happening so quickly.

“The risk of a misunderstanding of capabilities on one side or the other is great,” he said, adding the two sides need to talk so they “don’t stumble in any sort of conflicts”.

Tariffs and TikTok

The bipartisan congressional delegation comes just days after Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump spoke by telephone for the second time since the return to the White House of Trump, who has tried to keep a lid on tensions despite his once virulent criticism of China.

Trump said he would meet Xi on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea starting at the end of next month and that he would travel to China next year.

He said Xi would also visit the United States at an unspecified time and that the two leaders would speak again by telephone.

Both sides dramatically hiked tariffs against each other during a months-long dispute earlier this year, disrupting global supply chains.

Washington and Beijing then reached a deal to reduce levies, with the United States imposing 30% duties on imports of Chinese goods and China hitting US products with a 10% tariff. The deal expires in November.

Smith’s group on Monday held talks with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, in which they discussed the ongoing trade talks and the hot-button issues of fentanyl, critical minerals and the future of TikTok.

The White House has said a US version of TikTok would feature a homegrown model of the app’s prized algorithm, potentially clearing one of the main obstacles to keeping the Chinese-owned platform online in the United States.

Asked about the TikTok issue, Smith said: “My understanding is that I don’t think that has been 100% resolved.”

The delegation will also meet China’s National People’s Congress Chairman Zhao Leji and Foreign Minister Wang Yi.