Chinese Bloggers on the New Internet Regulation · Global Voices
Ministry of Information Industry of China issued a new regulation called “Rules on the Administration of Internet News Information Services” (For Chinese Original and unofficial English Translation of the document), which aims to put more monitoring and control over Chinese internet, including News Portal Websites, Bulletin Board System and Blog. Chinese Bloggers are having their voices concerning this regulation.
<PERSON>, a newspaper correspondent, wrote a post titled “Red Star over China”, condemning this round of censorship. He linked his article with coverage from the major foreign media and direct to another article which called on government to be aware of the emergence of Podcast.
Mindmeters cited an article to show his anger over the censorship. It was written by <PERSON>, a famous Chinese Novelist who has died 8 years ago. In the story he wrote with sharp irony: to block everything on internet and all the writers should be going to have physical labor since there is no space for them to earn a living merely by writing.
<PERSON> posted with some recent activities of censorship. 356
He reminded people that the English news websites are no longer safer than their Chinese counterparts as Great Firewall approached them. He mocked the legislature that the “Rules on Internet News Services” was put forward before the Laws on News.
<PERSON> protested on his blog and declared that he wouldn’t be blogging for a period of one month. He said that his decision was triggered off by the temporary blockage of Zaobao.com, a news website based in Singapore (It backed to normal yesterday). He used a famous figurative speech of “Frog in Warm Water” and urged his fellows not to adapt to the censorship on internet.
In general, there is nothing much new in the regulation since most of the measures adopted are already taken such as registering website and content control on News Bulletin; it only summed up them with more details. It has not mentioned blog specifically but would definitely have impacts on what bloggers can write. Also the upcoming Chinese Blogger Conference is not affected by it currently. 356