China yesterday released another round of blanket controls on the Internet giving the state widespread powers to control news sites and crush dissenting views in flourishing chatrooms.
The regulations, issued by the Ministry of Information Industry and published in the People's Daily, became effective yesterday and targeted "Internet broadcasting bulletin systems (BBS)."
BBS are defined as chatrooms, discussion forums, bulletin boards or any space provided by Web sites that allows for Internet users to post messages.
"No one can release BBS information that is against the national constitution, endangers state security, reveals state secrets, sabotages unity among ethnic groups and spreads heretical ideas, pornography, violence or other information," Xinhua news agency said of the rules.
The regulations appeared aimed at curbing increasing boldness in Chinese Internet chatrooms where criticism of government policy has grown with chatrooms often becoming forums for anti-government protest.
Earlier this year students at Beijing University used a Web site to post thousands of messages mourning the murder of a fellow student which initially criticized security on campus but later snowballed into protests about the educational system and drew large gatherings at the university.
The government shuts down Web sites tied to the outlawed China Democracy Party or Falun Gong spiritual group, and regularly blocks access to foreign news sites such as Yahoo! and CNN.com.
The new rules made it clear Chinese Web sites would be held responsible for policing their own content and ensuring that Internet users did not post messages that could be interpreted by the government as "illegal."
The rules follow similar regulations issued in January on the posting of "state secrets" on the Internet and regulations guiding Internet Content Providers (ICP) issued in October.
The definition of "state secret" in China is so broad that it could be used to refer to almost any piece of information posted on the Web from China.
The regulations on Internet news content required all Web sites with news content to be approved by the State Council, China's cabinet, while the use of foreign news content providers must also get approval.
"Any domestic Web site linked with a foreign news Web site and carrying news from foreign news media and Web sites will have to apply for approval to the State Council," the rules state.
China's media has long been under the strict control of the central leadership and the new regulations appear aimed at ensuring all Web sites are tightly policed.
Chinese news Web sites have proven to be faster and at times more accurate and complete than news from China's traditional state-run press.
The latest government figures showed the number of Internet users in China doubled in the first eight months of this year to 16.9 million.
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