Any individuals or firms that violate China's management regulations for the audio-visual business will have their licenses revoked up to 10 years, according to the latest circular issued by the Ministry of Culture.
The circular says that the ministry will set up a national database at the China Audio-Visual and Film Network website to publicize the names of those who are disqualified, Wednesday's China Daily reports.
This will include the names of individuals or companies that are punished for running illegal audio-visual businesses without permission, or operating such businesses while their licenses are suspended.
According to the circular, any companies or individuals that are included in the database should be denied licenses to run audio-visual businesses.
In the first half of this year, cultural administrative departments across the country sent nearly 200,000 inspectors to clean up the audio-visual market across the country.
Among the more than 169,000 audio-visual companies inspected, over 10,000 unlicensed ones were shut down and 3,550 had their licenses suspended.
And more than 40 million illegal audio-visual products were also seized by cultural administrative departments during the inspection.
(Xinhua News Agency July 31, 2002)
