The CAC's current director is Zhuang Rongwen, who concurrently serves as a Deputy Head of the CCP's Publicity Department of the Central Committee.

[8] The Director of both the state and party institutions is Zhuang Rongwen,[9] who serves concurrently as a Deputy Head of the CCP's Central Committee Publicity Department.

[12]: 143 The CAC is the majority owner of the China Internet Investment Fund, which has golden share ownership stakes in technology firms such as ByteDance, Weibo Corporation, SenseTime, and Kuaishou.

[1] The CAC implements information-dissemination guidelines and policies, regulates internet information content and management, supervises network news businesses, and investigates illegal or non-regulatory compliant websites.

[1] Since its founding in 2011, CAC had the authority to issue punitive orders, including imposing fines, license revocations, and business closures.

[1] Due to the CAC's political and regulatory roles, Rogier Creemers at Leiden University argues that it is the world's most powerful digital institution.

[12]: 251 In 2015, the CAC was also responsible for chasing down Internet users and web sites that published "rumors" following an explosion in the port city of Tianjin.

The song included the lines: “Unified with the strength of all living things, Devoted to turning the global village into the most beautiful scene” and “An Internet power: Tell the world that the Chinese Dream is uplifting China.”[24] The efforts of the CAC have been linked with a broader push by the Xi Jinping administration, characterized by Xiao Qiang, head of China Digital Times, as a "ferocious assault on civil society.

[27] A 2020 investigation by ProPublica and The New York Times found that CAC systematically placed censorship restrictions on Chinese media outlets and social media to avoid mentions of the COVID-19 outbreak, mentions of Li Wenliang, and "activated legions of fake online commenters to flood social sites with distracting chatter".

[33][34] In January 2023, CAC ordered any content displaying "gloomy emotions" to be censored during Lunar New Year celebrations as part of its "Spring Festival internet environment rectification" campaign.

[36] In April 2023,[37] the Cyberspace Administration of China issued draft measures stating that tech companies will be obligated to ensure AI-generated content upholds the ideology of the CCP such as Core Socialist Values, avoids discrimination, respects intellectual property rights, and safeguards user data.

The anti-censorship group GreatFire.org provided data and reports showing man-in-the-middle attacks against major foreign web services, including iCloud, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google.

In the attack, ads hosted on Baidu were able to leverage computers visiting from outside China, redirecting their traffic to overload the servers of GitHub.

[48] CAC says that online platforms will be responsible for the execution of the law if passed, although the specific penalties were not disclosed in the event of failure to comply.