Sep 27 2005
China’s New Internet Censorship
Read an WSJ article referred to by Slashdot.
The regulation could be found in full here.
New rule targets contents but not formats, e.g. anything news related is covered, regardless it is blog, BBS or whatever.
More strict registration, monitoring rules (e.g. video surveillance in every Internet cafe)
Team of editors to monitor contents in addition to filters and firewalls (my wife works for a credible US company who was hiring in China. One of the applicants was such an editor from the Ministry of National Security)
Natural evolution of Internet Censorship: from indiscriminatory to selective blocking. See “History of Wikipeida – Access in PRC” section.
WSJ is fair to point out there is abuse of the Net as media platform to spread rumors. I remember in the early 90s, there was a story among oversea Chinese about Tommy Hilfiger making racist remarks on Oprah Winfrey Show. I researched and found it was totally baseless (Tommy H didn’t even go to her show).
My speculation is media in the West originated from the need of a society needs reliable feedback, as all dynamic systems do. Chinese were created because of emulation. Not that there is no exception with either but the general trend is as such.
China Great Firewall is business morethan politics
They encourage freedom of speech in China so much just because they want to use it as a weapon against Chinese government not because Mr Bush is so worried about the interest of Chinese people even if he seems never too worried about the interest of …
[...] Example: Chinese restrictions on Internet-related activities (see blog). Russian government total control of TV stations. [...]