ESWN has translated in full the Nanfang Zhoumo article “14 Departments Unite to ‘Purify’ the Internet”:
“Actually, although the ‘real name’ system was implemented now with a formal document, the same process had always been going on.” Shenzhen City Public Security Bureau Network Security Monitoring Department director Qiao Zhi explained to our reporter. The various Shenzhen portals and the well-known chat rooms are under the “real name” system. BBS forums at the national portals such as Sina.com and Xinhua Net also register the “real names” of the network administrators.
“We could have done this without saying anything, and the effect would be the same. The reason that we went ahead with a highly visible policy announcement is that we know that QQ has a huge influence and we did not want them to feel that this procedure was directed at them specifically,” according to a person in the Shenzhen Public Security Bureau.
As this person said, the scope of the “real name” system will not be for QQ alone. The signs are that an even larger storm is coming soon. At 10am on August 9, our reporter went to the Shenzhen City Public Security Bureau Network Security Monitoring Department office, and director Qiao Zhi was signing a receipt for a document. He said immediately, “The Ministry of Information Industry has just sent a document to say that online games will require ‘real names.'”
