The Guangdong Communications Administration has punished Shenzhen Hesheng Zhihui Enterprise Management Consulting Company for sending unsolicited bulk email.

The Communications Administration has asked Hesheng to pay a CNY5000 fine and stop sending its spam immediately.

This is the first time that the Guangdong Communications Administration has punished a company for sending unsolicited bulk email. Hesheng has reportedly been harvesting email addresses from the Internet and sending large quantities of spam, including commercial ads, without the receivers' prior approval and without a means to unsubscribe form the messages.

Last week the Internet Society of China said it will soon start to train 1000 email service administrators in key regions across China in order to improve Chinese Internet companies overall level in dealing with email spam.