Controversies

Wei Zexi case: Joint cyberspace investigation team enters Baidu

In April 2016, college student Wei Zexi, who had synovial sarcoma, found through Baidu search a top-ranked hospital, the Second Hospital of the Beijing Armed Police Corps, received ineffective "biological immunotherapy" there, and later died, triggering strong condemnation of Baidu's medical paid search rankings. On May 2, the Cyberspace Administration of China, together with the State Administration for Industry and Commerce and the National Health and Family Planning Commission, formed a joint investigation team and entered Baidu. On May 9, the investigation findings concluded that Baidu's paid search rankings gave too much weight to paid placement and that commercial promotion labels were unclear, objectively affecting Wei Zexi's choice of medical treatment. Baidu was required to immediately clean up medical promotions, switch to a ranking mechanism based mainly on credibility, clearly label promotional information, and limit the proportion of promotions to within 30%; Baidu promised to rectify the situation and took a large number of medical promotions offline. The incident pushed forward the introduction of the Interim Measures for the Administration of Internet Advertising.