百度规范医疗广告业务

Wei Zexi, a 21-year-old college student who died last month of a rare form of cancer, had undergone a clinically uNPRoven treatment at a military hospital in Beijing.

The treatment cost Wei's family around 200,000 yuan and was unsuccessful. He died on April 12.

Before his death, Wei expressed anger at the hospital and search engine Baidu in an online post, accusing them of falsely claiming a high success rate for the treatment.

The treatment was a joint project between the hospital and a Shanghai-based private bio-tech company

The Cyberspace Administration of China looked into the case and found that Baidu's search results had influenced Wei's choice of medical treatment.

It also found that Baidu relied excessively on profits from paid listings in search results, and did not clearly label such listings as a commercial promotion.

The company has now been ordered to clean up in-search healthcare adverts, and the positioning of paid-for search adverts of any kind cannot be based only on the highest bidder.

A statement from the internet, industry and health regulators stipulate that the number of such adverts must also account for no more than 30 percent of a page of search results.

A spokeswoman for Baidu said it accepted the regulator's decision and said it would implement the requirements placed on it following the investigation.

The company says it will set aside one billion yuan, or about 150 million U.S. dollars, to compensate verified losses from fraud.

The investigation by the health and military authorities have also confirmed wrongdoing by the military hospital in Beijing in the treatment of the young cancer patient.

The hospital has been asked to terminate all projects outsourced to medical service providers, including the Shanghai firm.

The authorities have also been ordered to review all joint projects between military hospitals and private companies.

Baidu's Nasdaq-listed shares fell more than 3 percent in morning trade on Monday following the regulators commments.

Analysts estimate healthcare accounts for 20 to 30 percent of the company's search revenue. Search revenues represent some 84 percent of the web services firm's total sales in 2015.

For CRI, I'm Xie Cheng