NationStates Jolt Archive

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/09/27/china.internet.reut/index.html

China tightens control on Internet

SHANGHAI/BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- New Chinese regulations governing Internet news content tighten the noose on freewheeling bloggers and aim to rein in the medium that is a growing source of information for the mainland's more than 100 million users.

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"This is aimed at bloggers and other individual and ad hoc journalists that are out there and that don't have a licensed organization."
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China routinely blocks access to Internet sites on sensitive subjects such as self-ruled Taiwan, which China regards as its own, and the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrations which were crushed by the military with heavy loss of life.

Providers of online news and other services, from domestic players Sina Corp. and Sohu.com to international firms such as Yahoo Inc., also practice forms of self-censorship by blocking sites and prohibiting message posting on sensitive topics.

But the new regulations would curtail discussion on a wider variety of subjects, analysts said.

"Much more relevant is current affairs, social and political news. You don't necessarily have to touch taboo areas," said Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at the University of California at Berkeley.
Chat-room chatter

The rules also widen a campaign to step up control over the Internet that includes forcing bloggers and chat-room participants to use their real names and restricting university on-line discussion groups to students.

Censorship not good.

Funny idea - making everyone in China use their real names in chat rooms.

There are 65 million people with the surname Li or Lee.

Probably quite a few people with common first and last names in China.

I'll make sure to encourage the Chinese students at my university to make use of their freedoms here. :D

One of the huge benifits of an internet chatroom/forum is anonymity. If people were forced to use their real names, I would guess that use would decline.

Let 'em try, but information filters through. Since Tianemen Square, the Chinese have slowly had more acsesss to informatiion vis-a-vis their economic interactiions. Beijing, however, needs to realize that its desire for an open market economy is in direct conflict with its desire of censorship.

Let 'em try, but information filters through. Since Tianemen Square, the Chinese have slowly had more acsesss to informatiion vis-a-vis their economic interactiions. Beijing, however, needs to realize that its desire for an open market economy is in direct conflict with its desire of censorship.
My thoughts exactly. Once the economic door opens, all sorts of "subversive" ideas soon follow. It's a law of socio-economics. :)

"The internet. Opium of the masses!"

My thoughts exactly. Once the economic door opens, all sorts of "subversive" ideas soon follow. It's a law of socio-economics. :)
That's what makes Beijing's habits all the more troubling. The best way to preserve their power, I feel, is to loose some, reform, and carry on with services, not ways of keeping power. In fact, I don't think its contradictory for a state to be a dictatorship while having a free flow of information and expression (Singapore has had something like that for decades). But this surpression is all the more troubling because the longer they do this, the more severe any change is gonna be. When China finally has political reform (and it is a matter of time), I don't know if it will be a small coup or a giant civil war. I do know that it won't be peaceful.

China couldnt possibly be anymore restrictive.