China to punish spam message senders

China has begun soliciting public opinion on a draft regulation aimed at wiping out mass spam messages sent online and through mobile phones.

According to the document, drafted by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), any individual or organization found to send commercial text messages without the receiver's permission could face a penalty of up to 30,000 yuan (4,900 US dollars).

The junk messages targeted include text messages and those sent via social media tools such as Sina Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, and WeChat, a popular instant messaging service developed by Tencent.