'Sugar daddy' app banned from WeChat

Having soared to become one of the most-downloaded iPhone and Android apps in China within three days, the dating website SeekingArrangement was banned on Thursday from WeChat, the country's most-used social networking platform.

Infamous for connecting wealthy older men with young women online, and sometimes referred to as a "sugar daddy" app, SeekingArrangement entered the country in 2015 with a Chinese language site and apps. It has been in the spotlight since Tuesday, after the Global Times newspaper posted an article calling for the government to shut down its business in China for arranging "sugar dating". The article had been clicked more than 740,000 times as of Thursday.

Yi Shenghua, a criminal lawyer, said the services provided by such websites, though disguised as dating or matchmaking, can be classified as organizing or sheltering prostitution, and the website's founder and operator could face criminal charges, depending on the amount of cash traded and the number of people involved.