China has a censored search engine just for kids from state news agency Xinhua

The search app only brings up sanitized results from a limited selection of sites… like Xinhua

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Like many other search apps in China, Huayang Search has a range of content feeds. (Picture: Huayang Search)

Xinmei Shen

Published: 9:49pm, 12 Jul 2019Updated: 9:09am, 20 Sep 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

In a country with censorship as strict as China’s, it can be hard for authorities to ensure every trace of anything deemed inappropriate is expunged from the internet. Now state-owned media outlet Xinhua is making a new search engine app designed just for kids.

Huayang Search, just called Young in English, is “China’s first search engine customized for teenagers,” according to Xinhua. The organization says that its new search engine can filter out violence, pornography and gambling-related content, which will “open a beautiful internet world for kids.”

Huayang was jointly made by Xinhua and ChinaSo, a state-run search engine that has been immensely unpopular. Marketing for the new search engine isn’t being subtle about its purpose, either. Huayang was literally referred to as a “walled garden” at its launch event, in which a range of central government departments participated, including the Publicity Department of the Communist Party and the Cyberspace Administration of China.

Search engines in China have always been heavily censored, but Huayang seems to have taken things further by restricting search results to only a few websites and its own pool of content.

A search for G20 generated only seven results, all from state-run media. A search for Hong Kong brought up several Wikipedia-like entries of tourist attractions and a number of audio classes about Hong Kong pulled from the popular podcast app Qingting FM. Searching for AI technology, which the app says is a hot search term, shows articles that aren’t credited to any media outlet.

On social media, users expressed mixed views about the news.