The Beijing Police Bureau and Chinese search engine company Baidu have joined forces to launch a new initiative to increase public awareness about online safety and enhance ability to identify online fraud.

Baidu together with the Beijing Police, compiled the “Sunshine Action Handbook for Going Online Safely” so they can disseminate knowledge of browsing online securely as well as highlight measures to prevent fraud. This is Baidu's latest initiative in its Sunshine Action movement which was first launched a year ago.

The program will first be implemented in Beijing and then extended to the rest of China over the next two years. During this interval, the program’s goal is to reach out to 100 primary and high schools and 1,000 communities, encompassing 500 million netizens, through the help of 5,000 volunteers who will be recruited from high schools and communities.

Last year, Baidu's Sunshine Action initiative cracked down on 26.9 million web pages and 2.3 million web sites involved in fraudulent practices. The company also teamed up with relevant government authorities and business associations to launch the Sunshine Convoy to provide preventive message prompts in high-risk areas of online frauds, as well as protect over 5,000 brand enterprises and official customer services.

The initiative is determined by the increasing cybercrime rate. Nearly 10 percent of netizens in China have experienced online fraud during H1 2011.