Calls for regulating emojis and stickers in chatting apps have been made by a newspaper affiliated with Beijing's Communist rulers, amid a tightening of online information and the wider media in China.

Concerns about the language used in widely-shared stickers were raised in an article in the overseas edition of the Communist Party mouthpiece, the People’s Daily.

The article, which was written partly in the style of a named commentary, urged: “There should be regulations on how to use emojis on social networking websites."

It contained interviews with foreign students who discussed how emojis and user-generated stickers had become part of their learning.

Stickers are incredibly popular in China and are shared more than 20 million times a day on messaging app Wechat, a company spokeswoman told Shanghai based news outlet Sixthtone.

But some stickers and emojis use slang terms which can confuse users, the People’s Daily article said, and experts called for tough measures against those with more extreme content.

“Some have pornographic, violent, negative and unhealthy content, (and) some even violate laws and should be firmly opposed," Tang Zhengda, deputy researcher in language research institute of Chinese academy of social sciences told the newspaper.