BEIJING Reuters: According to China's state-run paper, Chinese internet platforms have not gone far enough in unblocking external links, as instructed by authorities, and relevant government bodies should take further action to intervene, on Tuesday.
According to the Economic Information Daily, a newspaper owned by the Xinhua News Agency, this showed companies could not be relied on to carry out own rectification and government bodies should take further actions including taking app developers that do not follow the rules offline.
According to the article Tencent's WeChat users still cannot access to full links from Weibo, while ecommerce platforms still block keywords in including Weixin WeChat's Chinese name.
The Internet space is dominated by a handful of technological giants who have traditionally prevented rivals' links and services from being shared on their platforms. The practice is often called 'walled gardens'
Last month, regulators ordered firms to rectify the practice, which they said has affected users' experience and damaged consumer rights, and ordered the platforms a deadline on Sept. 17th.
Tencent said in September that it would implement the changes in phases, starting with allowing users to access links in private, one-to-one chats once they upgrade to the latest version of WeChat.
Some services owned by Alibaba, including the food delivery app Ele.me, started to allow WeChat Pay. However, Alibaba's flagship eCommerce app Taobao and Tmall has yet to add WeChat Pay as a payment option.