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Youth.cn Defends the Party’s Role in Media Control

As the recent incident of the Chinese regime’s censorship of the Guangzhou based Southern Weekend‘s New Year’s editorial continued to develop, Youth.cn, the official website of Central Committee of the Chinese Youth League, also joined the public debate.
In its editorial on Tuesday January 8, 2013, the website said, “Southern Weekend is part of the newspaper business of the CCP’s Guangdong Provincial Party Committee; it is part of the Party Committee’s propaganda work. During the specific implementation of the Party’s propaganda work, internal disagreements and even conflicts and disputes are normal. This has nothing to do with constitutional government or freedom of the press.”
“In socialist China, the newspaper is a propaganda tool of the Party. The Party controls the media. This is an iron principle. One can confidently tell the world about that. A newspaper’s role is to convey the Party’s principles and policies and unify the mass’s understanding. … A newspaper is the Party’s eyes, ears, and mouth. Southern Weekend is too, whether in the past, now, or in the future. Over the years, a large number of outstanding editors and reporters have emerged in Southern Weekend. They are carefully selected and hired by the Southern Newspaper Group, under the guidance of the Party. They are also the Party’s journalists.”
Source: Radio Free Asia, January 8, 2013
http://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/jz-01082013150812.html
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Beijing Police Handled Over One Million Illegal Internet Postings in 2012

According to the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, its Internet security authorities organized rounds of crackdowns on Internet related crimes in 2012 to ensure order in cyberspace.

In 2012, its Internet security department found and dealt with a total of 108 million illegal web postings, punished 1.7 million websites, and shut down 1.9 web sections that had serious problems. In addition, it cracked a total of 3,800 Internet related cases and arrested more than 4,200 suspects.

Meanwhile, the Beijing police also provided guidance for Internet users on how to resist all kinds of rumors and bad information. For example, the Beijing police sent warning messages through microblogs to 915 Internet users who committed minor offenses.

Source: Xinhua, January 6, 2013
http://news.xinhuanet.com/2013-01/06/c_114271184.htm

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Beijing City to Implement Real Name Registration for Mobile Phone Users

Xinhua reported that the Beijing municipal government is considering a new policy measure requiring real name registration for cell phone users. Once the provision is introduced, mobile phone users will be required to provide real and effective identity information when ordering a new service or transferring or changing an existing service.

The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s rubber stamp legislature, recently approved an Internet regulation that states that providers of the Internet and land line telephone and mobile phone services should demand that users provide their real identity. The Beijing city government’s move is in accordance with the NPC regulation.

The requirement for real name registration for cell phone users is not new. In 2010, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a notice requiring real name registration for phone users. However, it was not fully implemented due to the lack of support from relevant laws and regulations. The NPC’s new regulation, Xinhua believes, will give local governments and telecomm companies a strong push to effectively implement mobile phone users real name registration.
 
Source: Xinhua, December 30, 2012
http://news.xinhuanet.com/2012-12/30/c_114207168.htm

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China’s New Internet Regulation Requires Real-Name Registration

China’s legislature has approved new rules that will tighten government control of the Internet by requiring users to register with their real names and demanding that Internet companies censor online material. The measures were approved on December 28, 2012, at the closing meeting of a five-day session of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress.

The government said that the latest regulation is aimed at protecting Web surfers’ personal information and cracking down on abuses such as junk email. The rules have the same legal effect as a law.

China’s government agencies and official media also expressed their support to strengthen regulations of websites and microblogs.

Analysts believe that the Internet has played a major role in exposing official corruption, causing some of those in power to experience “web-phobia.” This is an important reason behind the renewed campaign to control the Internet. Recently, Chinese Internet users, through web searches and web postings, have broken the news about a large number of corruption suspects among Chinese Communist Party officials, resulting in many officials being sacked.

Source: BBC Chinese, December 28, 2012
http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/chinese_news/2012/12/121228_china_internet_control.shtml

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China’s New Regulation Draft on Internet Control

On September 19, 2012, the State Council’s Legislative Affairs Office issued an “Approach to the Management of Internet Publishing Services” (draft version). The formal version is supposed to replace the existing “Provisional Regulations on Management of Internet Publishing” on January 10, 2013.

The “Approach” states that the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) is the agency that oversees Internet publishing services, which is also under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

The “Approach” requires that all those providing services must obtain an Internet Publishing Services Permit. Such services include the digital publication of books, newspapers, periodicals, music and video products, and other “informative and thoughtful text, pictures, games, animation and original digital works.”

The draft version provides that the editor is responsible for the quality and legality of the contents. The “Approach” forbids contents that “oppose the fundamental principles of the Constitution,” “leak state secrets, endanger national security, or compromise national honor or interest,” “spread rumors, disrupt the social order, or sabotage social stability,” and “endanger social morality or good ethnic cultural traditions.”
 
The “Approach” forbids joint ventures or foreign operated identities from engaging in web publishing services. GAPP must approve the publication of online games authored by owners with foreign copyrights.

An annual check of web publishing identities is required. Violators of the regulation are subject to penalties including suspension of the permit, shutting down the website, or even criminal prosecution.

Source: Website of the State Council’s Legislative Affairs Office, December 19, 2012
http://www.chinalaw.gov.cn/article/cazjgg/201212/20121200379100.shtml

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Xinhua Maintains Twitter Account Irking Chinese Netizens

Chinese medai have reported that Xinhua now maintains a Twitter account in English at “@XHNews.” On Twitter, Xinhua has over 5, 000 followers. The first posting dated back to March 1, 2012. The report has received wide attention from bloggers in China. “Many Chinese netizens learned for the first time that the Communist Party’s official media maintains an official blog on the overseas social media, in addition to its official blog on China’s domestic social media. The netizens blogged that they would love to visit the official blog.” The news angered Chinese micro-bloggers as they question why they are not allowed to access Twitter but Xinhua can. 

[Editor’s Note: Twitter and Facebook are not accessible from inside China, as the Chinese authorities block them. Only by using anti-censorship software in violation of the law can people in China “climb over” the Great Wall of Internet censorship to access Twitter and Facebook.]

Source: Nanfang Daily reprinted by sina.com, December 11, 2012
http://tech.sina.com.cn/i/2012-12-11/05547874393.shtml

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WCIT2012: China and Russia Called for New Internet Rules

The Shanghai based newspaper Dongfang Daily recently published a report on the World Conference on International Telecommunications 2012 (WCIT2012), which started on December 4 in Dubai and will last 12 days. Government representatives from over 193 countries attended the event. During the event, the Internet governance issue once again became a big topic. China and Russia called for a new UN-based governance structure for the Internet instead of the current system managed by the US-based non-profit organization ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). China and Russia expressed the belief that all Internet member countries should have equal rights to Internet management. The United States and some other countries in the West took a strong position against any measure that would allow governments to monitor what people read and say online. Large Internet companies such as Google also stood against the new proposal. The WCIT2012 host, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU – a UN branch), suggested that everybody should focus on the fact that there are still 4.5 billion people who couldn’t even connect to the Internet.
[Editor’s Note: Media later reported that, on the afternoon of December 10, China, Russia, and other countries with poor records on freedom of expression withdrew their proposals.]
Source: Dongfang Daily, December 4, 2012
http://www.dfdaily.com/html/51/2012/12/4/904561.shtml

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Lung Cancer, the Number One Cancer Killer, Jumped 56 percent in 10 years

The Beijing Health Bureau reported that the statistics collected by the Beijing Institute for Cancer Research affirmed that, in Beijing in 2010, lung cancer had the highest occurrence rate among male cancer patients and second highest among female cancer patients, second only to breast cancer. The lung cancer rate grew 56 percent from 2001 to 2010; it now accounts for one out of five cancer patients. In 2010 alone, the lung cancer mortality rate among Beijing city residents was 48.9 out of 100,000, the highest of all the cancer patients. Moreover, there was a sharp increase in lung cancer patients among adults 35 and older, with the male and female ratio at 172 versus 100. According to the Beijing Health Bureau, the main causes of lung cancer are smoking, followed by environmental pollution.

Source: Xinhua, November 25, 2012
http://news.xinhuanet.com/local/2012-11/25/c_113789743.htm

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