Chinese Discuss Plan to Tighten Restrictions on Cyberspace – Howard French

From the New York Times:

Chinese authorities have announced their intention to step up their efforts to police and control the Internet and other communications technologies, including instant messaging and cellphones.

Speaking at a conference in Beijing last Wednesday, Cai Wu, director of the powerful Information Office of the State Council, or China’s cabinet, said new control measures were needed “because more and more harmful information is being circulated online.”

The government’s statement of intent is being seen as the beginning of its most ambitious effort yet to rein in high-tech communication. Analysts said the measures, introduced after a proposal to make the news media’s unauthorized publication of “sudden events” a punishable offense, indicate an atmosphere of worry within the government about its ability to maintain power. [Full Text]

To read about efforts of Chinese citizens to get around Internet censorship, read an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times by Bill Xia of Dynamic Internet technologies Inc, “Foiling Beijing’s cyber cops“:

MY CYBER WAR with the Chinese Communist censors began in 2002. We had another battle last month when Beijing launched a massive campaign aimed at blocking access to banned Internet websites, around the anniversary of the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square massacre. Users in China suddenly could no longer get through to Google’s search engine, though the censored Chinese version of Google stayed up.

My colleagues and I spent two weeks, working round-the-clock, revising software that Chinese citizens could use to circumvent the censorship and gain access to the Western news and information sites the government sought to deny them. Our upgrade is now working, and information is flowing again. But after this latest exhausting bout, I feel it is important to speak out for the estimated 300,000 people in China who rely on my services but who cannot make their voices heard.

Baidu, Proxy of Gov Internet Monitoring Platform (From Baidu web site (and ChinaByte), translated by CDT):

Thanks to Chinese government’s “decision to establish an Internet news monitoring platform for a sustainable and healthy development of the Internet,” Baidu became the proxy and software architect of the platform run by the Information Office of the State Council.

Baidu, China’s runaway leader in search market, lending a hand is a lot of help to the Information Office, which has to look after around 1,000 web sites with news offering in order to “monitor the Internet news thoroughly.” The number of news updates at sina or sohu and other major portals is more than 10,000 daily, that of traditional media’s online operations is at least 1,000, making the work of the Information Office difficult.

With Baidu’s “intelligent collecting and categorizing system,” Internet censors simultaneously track around 1,000 major web sites in China, with the monitoring database updating more than 100 pages per second. The system helps filter irrelevant information such as ad and categorize the content body, analyze it and index it in the system, greatly improving efficiency. Of course, Baidu also built search function into the system, with their Chinese word break-down and even word meaning matching techniques (I don’t know what these mean:) [Full Text in Chinese]

China’s Internet Watchdogs Hold Video-conference on Net Tightening (From the Ministry of Information Industry web site, translated by CDT):

On June 28, China’s Ministry of Information Industry and the Information Office of the State Council, two major Internet watchdog agencies, held a joint video teleconference to promote a so-called “civilized Internet business and Internet surfing.” Minister of Information Wang Xudong and Director Cai Wu of the Information Office made “important remarks” to participants throughout the country in charge of local Internet news and other services, such as provincial information/propaganda offices, China Telecom, China Netcom, China Mobile, CNNIC, China Report Center for Internet Crime and Illegitimate Information, etc.

Wang praised “achievements” of his ministry but also stressed there is a lot more to do. Such as: enforcing phone user real ID, Internet management legislation and law enforcement staffing, strengthening monitoring of instant messenging, blogs, wireless Internet, P2P and search engines. [Full Text in Chinese]

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