FILE – Chinese are seen working on computer work stations. Called ‘bo ke’ in Chinese, blogs are hugely popular, especially among the young, despite strict rules on content enforced by the government.
February 06, 2015 7:21 AM
BEIJING—China has announced plans to tighten its Internet controls even further beginning next month. The announcement and other tightening measures comes at a time when the reach of social media continues to expand.
According to the Cyberspace Administration of China, the new regulations will require users who post comments online, or in chat rooms and blogs, to register using their real name and agree to abide by a code of conduct. That code includes pledges that users will not criticize the Communist Party, make racist remarks nor post pornography.
Collection of data
For several years now, China has been requiring Internet companies to collect the real names of users. But compliance has been mixed at best.
Eric Harwit is a professor of Asia Studies at the Hawaii-based East-West Center who monitors cyber activity in China. He said that although the regulations are not new, authorities do seem to be sending a signal that users will be punished if they push too far.
“Up until now the Internet service providers, the websites that host chat rooms or Weibo in Chinese have been rather lenient about enforcing these kinds of rules. Now the Chinese government is really trying to impress on those mainly private companies that they really do have to watch what kind of content people are posting on their sites,” he said.
Maintaining order
Last April, China launched a campaign to clean-up online content. Authorities fined Sina Corp nearly $1 million for “unhealthy and indecent content.” In December, the Ministry of Culture announced that 11 companies, including Tencent and Baidu, would be fined as well for similar violations.
China has the world’s biggest online population and authorities work tirelessly to maintain order. The country’s Internet is filtered to block out unwanted political and sexual content and a wide range of search topics by what is known as the Great Firewall of China.
The wall blocks access to news and information sites such as VOA, The New York Times and others, topics such as Tibet, Tiananmen and Occupy Central as well as social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. According to GreatFire.org, an Internet portal that monitors what authorities are filtering, nearly 50,000 website addresses are blocked.
Harwit said that the new rules may make people a little more conservative for a while, but the regulations are unlike to change much in the long run. “The government I think doesn’t really want to shut down a lot of the communication, the vast majority of which is positive for Chinese social and economic development,” stated Harwit.
Xu Feng, head of the Cyberspace Administration of China’s mobile Internet bureau told the Global Times that while the regulations require a real name, users would still be able to personalize their usernames.
