The Chinese instant messaging provider Tencent has announced on its official bulletin board forum that it temporarily closed its QQ chat room from January 8, 2009.

The company is coordinatig with the Chinese government's special campaign against the vulgar atmosphere on the Chinese Internet, and the the company decided to temporarily close its QQ chat room service from 17:00, January 8, 2009, and the company will publish the time for reopening in a further notice.

On January 5, 2009, seven Chinese government departments jointly started a nationwide campaign to fight websites that spread pornography and vulgarity on the Chinese Internet. At the same time, a list of 19 websites which had pornographic and vulgar contents were exposed, including well-known websites like Google, Baidu, Sina.com, Sohu.com, QQ.com and NetEase.com.

Over the past few days, several relevant websites such as Sina.com and NetEase.com have implemented rectification campaigns and made public apologies.