BBC Chinese recently reported that, on May 27, the Chinese authorities started a month-long legal campaign against illegal communications distributed across popular public instant messaging tools such as WeChat, which has over 300 million users. The China National Internet Information Office, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the Ministry of Public Security are operating this campaign jointly. According to the officials in charge of this program, the primary goal is to crack down on rumors, violent activities, terrorism and pornography. In addition to those targets, this campaign also attacks “domestic and foreign hostile forces’ infiltration and sabotage activities.” Seven major Chinese instant messaging vendors volunteered to craft a joint agreement on establishing rules requiring users to use their real names, associating user accounts with cellphone numbers, restricting the size of online chat groups, and reviewing contents posted to the chat groups. The agreement also promised timely reports to be sent to the authorities as soon as “hot topics” gather substantial interest.
Source: BBC Chinese, May 27, 2014
http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/china/2014/05/140527_wechat_governance.shtml