President Xi Jinping has emphasized the importance of improving long-term mechanisms for cyberspace governance.

Presiding over a Politburo meeting on Friday, he called for sustained efforts to cultivate a clean, healthy and sound online environment.

He stressed the need to strengthen guidance of online platforms, independent media creators and multi-channel internet entities, and urge them to shoulder social responsibilities and serve as disseminators of positive energy.

Xi highlighted the importance of making the internet a vital front for ideological guidance, moral cultivation and cultural inheritance.

Pointing out that unhealthy online content pollutes social morals and harm the public's interests, Xi called for the courage to take resolute action against them and for efforts to cut off the networks of interests and industrial chains behind, and to remove the breeding grounds and conditions for their emergence.

Xi noted that the continuous emergence of new technologies and applications, such as artificial intelligence and big data, presented challenges to cyberspace governance while offering new avenues for support.

Acknowledging that cyberspace governance is a common challenge for all countries, he emphasized the importance of international collaboration to combat illegal and criminal activities online and to advance the building of a community with a shared future in cyberspace.

China's top internet regulator said in September it would take action against ByteDance-owned news app Jinri Toutiao and Alibaba's internet browser company UCWeb for allegedly displaying harmful content.

That same month, the Cyberspace Administration of China announced a two-month campaign aiming "to regulate the malicious incitement of conflict and the promotion of violence and vicious currents" across social media. (Xinhua/AFP)