China's internet regulator said it held a special symposium for optimizing the business network environment on Wednesday, during which there were calls for efforts to address harmful online information and crack down on online smearing.

The meeting, held by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), emphasized that optimizing the business network environment is urgently needed to ensure the stability of the industrial chain, maintain national industrial and economic security, enhance international core competitiveness, and promote healthy economic development.

It is necessary to accurately understand the main problems existing in the current business network environment, comprehensively and objectively analyze the causes of problems such as false and untrue information related to enterprises and information that infringes on the rights and interests of entrepreneurs, deal with the harmful online information that plagues enterprises and entrepreneurs, and focus on optimizing the business network environment, the meeting said.

The CAC also called for efforts to "correctly handle opinions from netizens and the general public."

Also, management of problematic accounts will be strengthened, and the CAC will strictly deal with accounts that are maliciously launched and coerce companies to carry out business cooperation.

The heads of 10 companies including China Electronics Technology, China Eastern Airlines, Mindray Medical, and Yili Group attended the meeting and made speeches on further optimizing the business network environment.