Chinese regulators turn their attention to blogs
BEIJING - The Chinese government has decided to impose stricter controls on the Internet and will now tighten the scrutiny on blogs and search engines to bar content deemed immoral or unhealthy, it was announced on Friday.
"As more and more illegal and unhealthy information spreads through the blog and search engine, we will take effective measures to put the BBS, blog and search engine under control," Cai Wu, director of the Information Office in China's Cabinet told the official Xinhua news agency. He added that such measures were needed "because more and more harmful information is being circulated online." China has the second biggest population of Internet users after the United States and it is going to be a huge task to monitor an estimated 110 million net users. But the Chinese government is determined "to purify the environment of internet and mobile communication network through a series of measures within a year."
According to Baidu.com, there are an estimated 37 million Internet blogs in China. This figure is being increased by 100,000 each day, said Zhang Xiaorong of Bokee, which was one of the first blog ventures in the country. But China has the most advanced Internet monitoring technology in the world. Wang Xudong, deputy minister of the information industry stressed that the next step was to tweak this technology enough so as to monitor blogs in a better manner.
These new rules come on the back of a proposed law banning media from reporting "sudden events" without prior permission. China experts feel that this rash of new media gaga betrays insecurity in the government regarding control over the country's media. Zhan Jiang of the China Youth University of Political Science said as much, "Of course we don't want the government to do this, as with the earlier announcement about breaking news. It seems the government is trying to assert more and more control."
