China: Cyberspace Administration of China released guidance for local authorities on implementing “licence and display” initiative for internet news and information services

On 1 August 2025, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) announced the continued promotion of the “licence and display” initiative for internet news and information services, aimed at further standardising online dissemination and enhancing the recognition of such services. The CAC deployed guidance for local CACs to improve approval quality and efficiency and required 15 websites and platforms approved to provide internet news and information dissemination platform services, including Tencent, Douyin, Kuaishou, and Weibo, to optimise and enhance system functionality, strengthen service qualification verification, and uniformly apply a red “V” mark to public accounts authorised to provide internet news and information services. This measure achieved full coverage across content formats including text, audio, live broadcasts, and short videos, with 13'516 public accounts marked with the red “V” as of 25 July 2025, displaying the service provider name, licence number, and service category, and 4,401 websites, platforms, and other service formats explicitly displaying licensing information. The CAC stated that it will institutionalise, proceduralise, and dynamically promote the “licensing and display” of internet news and information services, introduce traffic support policies for Red “V” accounts, and take enforcement actions against the production and dissemination of false or inaccurate news, the impersonation of counterfeit news media, the leasing, lending, or transfer of service licences, and unlawful profit-making under the guise of public opinion oversight, with the objective of maintaining a clean and transparent cyberspace.