China bans online media from publishing unverified reports

Beijing: China has banned online media from publishing unverified content, especially from the social media, after the country's internet regulator punished some major websites that fabricated stories this year.

China has banned online media from publishing unverified contents, specially from the social media.

Online media basing news reports on contents made on social media must verify them before publication, China's Internet regulator said yesterday.

News websites must accredit these sources, and they are banned from fabricating stories or distorting facts, according to a notice issued by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

The CAC has punished some major websites which have fabricated stories this year, including sina.com", ifeng. com"ifeng, 163.com and the site run by one of the country's biggest Internet companies, Tencent.

In one notorious case, a journalist from the respected Caijing Magazine wrote a story in February based on fabricated online content describing a village in northeast China where villagers do not respect the elderly and women are promiscuous.

The story went viral, the report said.

"Western scholars forged and hyped China's 'string of pearls strategy' in the Indian Ocean, and some Indians believe that MSR is just an alternative wording that sounds more pleasant and is used to replace the string of pearls strategy," the article said.

"The so-called string of pearls strategy is a military and geostrategic design. But Chinese leaders define the 'Belt and Road' initiative as the top-level design of China's opening-up and economic diplomacy in the new era and Chinese solutions and suggestions toward world peace and development," it said.

"India's reaction toward the 'Belt and Road' initiative is a part of its Indo-Pacific strategy under which India takes precedence of geopolitics over geoeconomics cooperation," it said.

Indian hedging strategy toward the 'Belt and Road' has very strong military and strategic implications. The 'Belt and Road' initiative is an economic cooperation, and China will invest a large amount of capital along the route that India cannot match, it added.

"Modi's visit to three Indian Ocean countries in March 2015 shows that India is determined to adopt an asymmetrical strategy to secure a dominant position in the Indian Ocean through bolstering military and security cooperation with these island nations," it said.

Also India enforced its military and strategic coordination with the US, Japan and some Southeast Asian countries which have islands disputes with China in the South China Sea, it said.

"So in the Indo-Pacific region, there is competition between geoeconomic cooperation and geopolitical cooperation.

India, the US and Japan want to hedge economic and trade cooperation initiated by China with their military and security cooperation. This situation does not benefit the advancement of the 'Belt and Road' initiative," it said.

To deal with the situation, China should make clear its purposes in the Indian Ocean, "specially the security of sea lanes of energy and trade, the security of overseas investment and the security of overseas Chinese, to build strategic trust with Indian Ocean countries, especially India," it said.

Also China should step up efforts to improve maritime economic cooperation, maritime interconnection, civil cooperation, disaster relief cooperation, legal cooperation and other maritime security activities, providing more international public goods collectively with other countries, to ensure the security of sea lanes and freedom of navigation in the Indian Ocean, it said.

"In the long run it is necessary to build stable regional security architecture. China should continue to advocate new security concepts and make efforts to build an inclusive and democratic regional security architecture," it said.