China's cyberspace administrator issued a notice on Monday on regulation of the provincial-level branches of commercial websites, aiming to restore an orderly cyberspace disturbed by the branches' malpractices like blackmailing and publishing false information.

Only the commercial websites that have obtained licenses for reporting news are allowed to create a local section on their websites, after gaining approval from the provincial-level cyberspace administration office and registering with the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). The branches can only reprint the news, said a notice on CAC's website on Monday.

Commercial sites include news portals such as sina.com.cn and sohu.com or producers of so-called "individual media," which refer to subscription-based accounts that have become popular on mobile messaging service WeChat.

Commercial websites are not entitled to report or edit news, according to CAC.

The branches of websites failing to gain approval from the provincial-level cyberspace administrators within a month of the issuance of the notice will be shut down.

Qualified local branches of commercial websites need to have a sound mechanism, including a 24-hour work system, the report said.

The two-month campaign to revamp such Web pages was launched in mid-January.

The campaign would help regulate the Internet since some websites have contracted their local branches to other companies which had posted fake information or blackmailed other companies for money with negative reports, Zhang Zhian, vice president of the School of Communication and Design at Sun Yat-sen University, told the Global Times.

State media should also be regulated in such campaigns, Zhang suggested.

The notice also specified the key focus of the campaign which includes ineligible news reporting and editing, contracting the local branches to a third party, and improperly using the right to publish news to gain illegitimate benefits.

A total of 387 local branches of commercial websites were shut down in 2015, including the Guangdong branch of State news site chinanews.com and haodf.com, a site for consultations between medical professionals and those seeking medical advice, said people.cn.