Chinese Government to Police Blogs

The BBC reports that the Chinese government has announced plans to extend its censorship and control of its citizens’ internet environment to blogs.

The press advocacy group Reporters without Borders said in the BBC article that the initiative would “enable those in power to control online news and information much more effectively”.

Private bloggers must register the full identity of the person responsible for the sites with the Chinese Ministry of Information Industry (MII) by the end of June, and fines of up to one million yuan (£66,000) may be imposed if they fail to register.

Reporters without Borders believes that “the authorities hope to push the most outspoken online sites to migrate abroad where they will become inaccessible to those inside China because of the Chinese filtering systems”. According to the BBC story:

Known as the Great Firewall, the filtering system used by the Chinese government is not entirely unbreachable; for every new restriction and technical door that it slams shut, the Chinese people find a hack, a workaround or an entirely new way of communicating.

According to official figures, about 75% of sites have already complied with the new procedure.

In May, many bloggers received e-mails telling them to register or face having their blogs declared illegal.

But one anonymouse China-based blogger told Reporters Without Borders that when he phoned the MII to register he was told not to bother because “there was no chance of an independent blog getting permission to publish”.

Having just passed the anniversary of Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government reminds the world just how far it has not come.

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