China online news clampdown
p2p news / p2pnet:- In a move reminiscent of Soviet Union efforts to repress freedom of speech, Communist China is enforcing hard-core censorship on Net news sites.
"The State bans the spreading of any news with content that is against national security and public interest," says Xinhua , the state the official news agency.
Only "healthy and civilized news and information that is beneficial to the improvement of the quality of the nation, beneficial to its economic development and conducive to social progress" will be allowed, it states.
The new rules take effect immediately and will "standardize the management of news and information," says News 1.
Only "healthy and civilized news and information that is beneficial to the improvement of the quality of the nation, beneficial to its economic development and conducive to social progress".
China’s Communist Party leaders are, “ruling the country and can do whatever they want under whatever name,” DIT ceo Bill Xia told p2pnet in June.
Accordingly, China boasts crews of Net Police who patrol the Net and sites are now required to register.
However, only 430,000 had chosen to "make themselves known at the Information Ministry – suggesting that most of the country’s estimated 4 million web loggers, or bloggers, are choosing to stay out in the cold," said The Australian., quoting Duncan Clark, managing director of Beijing-based media consultancy BDA China, as saying, "There’s a bit of a chill blowing through right now."
The campaign for registration is "obviously an effort to impose control" on web activities, said Clark, who’d moved his web site offshore to avoid the regulators.
"Internet news shall not include content that … incites illegal gatherings, associations, marches, demonstrations and crowds to harm social order," one newly added item says, according to Agence France Presse. "Internet news shall not include content that … aids illegal civil organizations to hold activities," was another.
Nicolas Becquelin, the Hong Kong-based director of Human Rights in China, said the new rules were aimed at making Internet operators in China censor themselves and reflected the government’s concern with the technology.
"Basically the content of the regulations are already in the criminal law, state security law and other laws that already prevent any information that is not approved from being circulated," Becquelin told AFP. ""But the new regulations also tell us that the state is afraid of an increasingly burgeoning independent civil society using modern Internet technology to organize."
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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win
- Mohandas Gandhi
See:-
News 1 – China Wants Only ‘Healthy‘ News on Web, September 25, 2005
interesting changes – 2M Chinese abandon CCP, June, 2005
The Australian – China fights to control the net, June 6, 2005
Agence France Presse – China toughens rules on Internet news, targets civil society, September 26, 2005
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If you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent website blocking outside of China.
Download it here and feel free to copy the zip and host it yourself so others can download it.
