China to toughen regulation on online ads

BEIJING - China will intensify efforts to regulate online commercials following public ire over deceptive online advertising.

A temporary regulation will take effect on Sept 1, requiring publishers to clearly mark all online commercials as advertisements to warn netizens, according to Gan Lin, vice head of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC), on Wednesday.

A college student died in April after he followed allegedly deceptive information promoted by search engine Baidu and signed up for medical treatment at a Beijing hospital.

The upcoming regulation makes it clear that paid promotion of information on search engines is classed as advertising.

According to Gan, a department tasked with monitoring online commercials will also be established.

From September 2015 to August 2016, the SAIC and other market regulators discovered around 3,200 cases of unlawful online advertising and issued fines in the region of 67 million yuan ($10 million).