China Tightens Grip on Internet With New Content, Media Rules
How Can Crackdown Track
100 Million Internet Users?
Ban on Word 'Democracy'
Can China really control the Internet?
It has launched a new bid to try. In an effort to crack down on the information access and activities of China's 100 million Internet users, the Chinese government is imposing new regulations that will attempt to centralize all China-based Web news and opinion under a state regulator.
The laws would prohibit content that "goes against state security and public interest," likely affecting Chinese bloggers, bulletin boards on popular portal sites, and other independent Chinese-news Web sites.
The announcement of the new laws follows a broader Chinese crackdown on television and other media. The move appears to be aimed at imposing order over news that Beijing doesn't like. In part, that is a response to the rapid development of a vibrant media scene rife with sensationalist, and sometimes inaccurate, news, but it also grants authorities more power to stifle nascent pro-democracy movements.
The government has long maintained theoretical control over all Chinese media, including the Internet. But the new laws, which update regulations issued in 2000, have drawn a line in the sand for China's netizens, imposing fines of up to $3,700 and the threat of complete closure to Web sites that provide news without government authorization. The laws also change the legal definition of Internet "news," vaguely defined in the past as "news published and republished," to now also include "reports and comments on political, economic, military, foreign policy and other social public affairs."
Such an online crackdown challenges China's emerging sphere of personal opinion blogs, or online diaries, as well as Nasdaq-listed Chinese web portals such as Sina.com and Sohu.com, which have become centers of often free-ranging discussion among China's urban elite.
Online debates on everything from China's diplomatic relationship with Japan to the formaldehyde content of Chinese beer often stray far beyond the editorial constraints that Beijing's propaganda officials impose on the country's newspapers, TV stations and radio programs.
However, China's ability to fully control the Internet remains in question. Already, the government blocks access to some Web sites, such as those of foreign newspapers, which contain information it deems subversive or pornographic.
And Beijing has arrested dissidents who blatantly post essays questioning the government. According to the French organization Reporters Without Borders, the number of Chinese imprisoned as a result of Internet activities has jumped to 62 at present from three in 2001, while the number of imprisoned reporters from traditional media has generally held steady. Earlier this month, the Chinese arm of web portal Yahoo Inc. provided information to the government that led to the conviction of a Chinese journalist who had written about media restrictions.
Many Chinese Internet users, dismissing what they call government scare tactics, find ways around censorship. The government requires users of cybercafs to register with their state-issued ID cards on each visit, but some users avoid cybercaf registration by paying off owners. In response, the government has installed video cameras in some cafs and shut others.
Bloggers, who are now also required to register with the government, have found ways to host their sites on overseas servers, such as the Shanghai-based blog Chinaherald.net, which is hosted in Santa Monica, California. However, the Chinese government does have the ability to block access to these servers from inside China.
While certain words such as "democracy" are banned in online chat rooms, China's Web users sometimes transmit sensitive information as images, or simply speak in code, inserting special characters such as underscoring into typing. They also tried using Skype, the free Internet voice-calling service, although state-owned phone company China Telecom Corp. this month placed some restrictions on the service.
One scholar of Chinese media, who declined to be named out of fear of retribution, says the new rules are just a tougher revision of existing regulations. "The so-called new rules, it isn't new, because most of the contents have actually been published in different areas before," he said. "It doesn't work -- a lot of people know how to break through the restrictions."
Insiders who work for the big portal sites say they are already in regular contact with authorities about forbidden topics, such as the outlawed Falun Gong religious group, which their teams of Web editors pull off bulletin boards.
But the new regulations appear to extend coverage to a much wider set of online content, including the sorts of links and commentary offered by bloggers or the portals and news sites themselves -- services that they currently use to offer a competitive edge over other Web sites.
For example, analysts speculate that blog-driven portal Bokee.com, which plans a Nasdaq listing at the end of 2006, might have to alter its business model because the new rules could make blogging more unattractive. Bokee aims to build China's biggest blogging community and make money selling online ads and cellphone text-messaging services.
Company founder Fang Xingdong said he thought the regulatory changes would have minimal impact. Bokee's bloggers "mainly write about their own lives," he said. "Not that many people comment on news."
Officials at Sina declined to comment. Sohu said the company was still digesting the new rules, but in general welcomes them. "They are good for the development of the Internet in China," spokeswoman Dahlia Wei said.
Bloggers are concerned that any attempts to limit their right to commentary as well as to cut and paste information from other news sources could fundamentally alter the openness that characterizes their community.
The government says it hopes the new rules will make online news more reliable by phasing out small and unauthorized cyber-news publishers. As they have opened to commercialization, the Chinese media have also liberalized in recent years, sometimes scoring journalistic coups such as exposing public-health scandals and corruption. But they also have occasionally spun out of control as some media companies scramble for profits and audiences at any cost. For example, the government harshly criticized unverified stories run by numerous newspapers and Web sites in July about the level of formaldehyde in Chinese beer.
Sina and Sohu didn't allow discussion of the new rules on their bulletin boards yesterday. But Chinese Internet users elsewhere expressed concerned about the crackdown. On Yahoo's Chinese site cn.yahoo.com, one wrote: "An extremely ridiculous rule, a rule trampling human rights, a rule against people's will and a rule leading to the darkness."
中国政府出台控制互联网的新举措
中国真的能够控制互联网吗？
它已经在这方面开始了一次新的尝试。为了对中国1亿互联网用户的信息获取和网上活动进行控制，中国政府正在实施一系列新规定，试图用一部法规集中统一管理中国所有的网络新闻和网络评论。
这些法规将禁止“不利于国家安全和公共利益”的内容传播，中国知名门户网站上的那些中文网志、留言板以及其他独立的中文新闻网站都有可能因此而受到影响。
在宣布这些新的法规之前，中国已经加强了对电视和其他媒体的控制。此举似乎旨在限制政府认为不适当的消息扩散传播。这一定程度上是针对迅速充斥媒体的各种耸人听闻且缺乏可靠性的新闻所采取的应对措施。但这些法规显然也赋予了政府更大的权利，有利于其防止各种争取民主的行动出现失控。
从理论上说中国政府对国内所有媒体都有控制权，互联网也不例外。但此次对2000年所颁布法规的修订却为中国网民设置了明确的规范，网站今后如果发布未经政府认可的新闻，最高将被处以相当于3,700美元的罚款并有可能遭到关闭。新修订的法规还改变了互联网“新闻”的法律定义，这类新闻以往只被模糊地定义为“被发表和转载的消息”，而现在则将“有关政治、经济、军事、外交政策和其他社会公共事务的报导和评论”也包括在内。
这一限制措施有可能对表达个人意见的网络日志这一中国的新生事物以及新浪网(Sina.com)和搜狐(Sohu.com)等在那斯达克上市的中文门户网站造成负面影响，这些网上站点已经成为中国的城市精英自由发表意见的中心。
从中日关系到中国啤酒所含的甲醛成分，人们在网上可以讨论任何问题，讨论范围之广远远超过了政府宣传部门给报纸、电视和广播所设定的限度。
但中国全面控制互联网的能力仍然值得怀疑。中国政府已经屏蔽了一些网站，如海外报纸的网站等，政府认为这些网站所发布的一些信息具有颠覆和色情性质。
中国政府已经逮捕了一批在网上发表文章质疑政府的持不同政见者。据法国的记者无疆界(Reporters Without Borders)组织称，因从事互联网活动而被监禁的中国人目前已经从2001年时的3个人跃升至了62人，而这段时间内被捕入狱的传统媒体记者在人数上则大体没有变化。本月早些时候，门户网站雅虎(Yahoo Inc.)的中国业务部门向政府提供了相关信息，从而使一名就媒体限制问题撰写文章的中国记者得以被判有罪。
中国许多互联网用户并不在意政府的这些限制行动，他们可以找到绕过政府审查的方法。政府要求去网吧的人每次都要用自己的身份证进行登记，但一些人却通过贿赂网巴老板而避免了登记。作为应对措施，政府已经在一些网吧安装了摄像头，而且还关闭了一部分网吧。
撰写网志的博客目前也被要求向政府登记，但这些博客已经找到了用海外服务器做自己网站主机的方式。如上海的网志Chinaherald.net就将主机设在了美国加州的圣莫尼卡。不过，中国政府有能力阻止人们从中国大陆接入这些服务器。
虽然如“民主”等词汇在网络聊天室内被禁止使用，但中国的网民有时会用图形或者乾脆使用代号来传达敏感的信息，他们会在输入文字时打入一些如下划线等特殊字符。他们还尝试使用免费的互联网语音呼叫服务Skype，不过国有电话公司中国电信(China Telecom Corp.)本月为这项服务设置了一些限制。
中国传媒界的一位学者说，这些新规定不过是将现有法规又收紧了一些，并不是什么新东西，多数内容此前都曾公布过。这位因害怕遭到报复而不愿意透露姓名的学者说：“这不管用──许多人知道如何突破这些限制。”
一些大型门户网站的内部工作人员说，他们已就政府禁止讨论的话题定期与监管部门进行接触，以被政府宣布为非法的法轮功为例，网站编辑们会将与之有关的内容从网络留言板上撤下来。
但新法规所监管的网上内容似乎大大扩展了，网志、门户网站和新闻网站所提供的链接和评论一类的服务也被纳入了监管范围。而很多网站目前正是靠这类服务来赢得竞争优势。
例如，分析师们就猜测，以网志见长的门户网站博客网(Bokee.com,)可能不得不改变其业务模式，因为新法规的出台可能会降低网志的吸引力。计划2006年年底在那斯达克上市的博客网计划建立中国最大的博客社区，并通过出售网上广告和移动电话短信服务来赚钱。
该公司创办人方兴东说，他认为政府监管法规的修改不会对博客网产生什么影响。他说，博客网的博客们“主要是写他们自己的生活，没有多少人对新闻发表评论。”
新浪网的管理人士拒绝发表评论。搜狐则表示，该公司仍在消化这些新法规，总体上对它们持欢迎态度。搜狐的发言人表示，新法规对中国互联网业的发展有利。
博客们担心，限制他们发表评论以及引用和张贴来自其他新闻来源的消息会从根本上改变作为网志特色的开放性。
政府则表示，通过将那些发布小道消息的人清除出局，新法规可以使网上消息更加真实可靠。随著中国媒体的逐步商业化，近年来它们已变得更加自由化，有时也会揭露一些公共健康方面的丑闻和腐败事件。但一些媒体公司为了追求利润和扩大受众有时也会做出些出格的事。例如，今年7月中国的许多报纸和网站未经核实就转发了有关中国啤酒甲醛含量的报导，此事受到了政府的严厉批评。
新浪和搜狐昨日未允许网民在留言板上讨论新出台的法规。但中国网民在雅虎中文网站cn.yahoo.com等其他地方表达了对这些控制措施的担忧。
