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China Wants Only 'Healthy' News on Web
By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer
Sun Sep 25, 5:36 PM ET

BEIJING - China said Sunday it is imposing new regulations to control content on its news Web sites and will allow the posting of only "healthy and civilized" news.

The move is part of China's ongoing efforts to police the country's 100-million Internet population. Only the United States, with 135 million users, has more.

The new rules take effect immediately and will "standardize the management of news and information" in the country, the official Xinhua News Agency said Sunday.

Sites should only post news on current events and politics, according to the new regulations issued by the Ministry of Information Industry and China's cabinet, the State Council. The subjects that would be acceptable under those categories was not clear.

Only "healthy and civilized news and information that is beneficial to the improvement of the quality of the nation, beneficial to its economic development and conducive to social progress" will be allowed, Xinhua said.

"The sites are prohibited from spreading news and information that goes against state security and public interest," it added.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/china_internet;_ylt=Amw8Vsq0Z77nD.BMFfdOoX9hr7sF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

Interestingly, i tried to post some comments via YAHOO discussion ... and WAS BLOCKED. Anyone else care to give it a try ?

God Bless China.

[deessell]

The same thing would happen in Vietman when I lived there. If there were any negative comments regarding "the party" the program would be dropped or have technical problems and the internet would be firewalled. This was especially true during sars, bird flu and the "uprising" of the Montegards in central Vietnam.

[igotthisguitar]

HILLARY CLINTON SAYS INTERNET NEWS NEEDS 'RETHINK'

Drudge Report | September 25, 2005

China on Sunday imposed new media restrictions designed to limit the news and other information available to Internet users, sharply restricting the scope of content that can be posted on Web sites.

In 1998 during a meeting with reporters, Hillary Rodham Clinton said that "we are all going to have to rethink how we deal with" the Internet because of the handling of White House sex scandal stories on Web sites.

Clinton was asked whether she favored curbs on the Internet, after the DRUDGE REPORT made headlines with coverage of her husband's affair with a White House intern.

"We are all going to have to rethink how we deal with this, because there are all these competing values ... Without any kind of editing function or gatekeeping function, what does it mean to have the right to defend your reputation?" she said.

Hillary Clinton Continued:

"I don't have any clue about what we're going to do legally, regulatorily, technologically -- I don't have a clue. But I do think we always have to keep competing interests in balance. I'm a big pro-balance person. That's why I love the founders -- checks and balances; accountable power. Anytime an individual or an institution or an invention leaps so far out ahead of that balance and throws a system, whatever it might be -- political, economic, technological --out of balance, you've got a problem, because then it can lead to the oppression people's rights, it can lead to the manipulation of information, it can lead to all kinds of bad outcomes which we have seen historically. So we're going to have to deal with that. And I hope a lot of smart people are going to --"

REPORTER: Sounds like you favor regulation.

MRS. CLINTON: Bill, I don't know what -- that's why I said I don't know what I'm in favor of. And I don't know enough to know what to be in favor of, because I think it's one of those new issues we've got to address. We've got to see whether our existing laws protect people's right of privacy, protect them against defamation. And if they can, how do you do that when you can press a button and you can't take it back. So I think we have to tread carefully.

[igotthisguitar]

China tightens control on Internet
Analysts: New rules aimed at individuals' online discussions
Wednesday, September 28, 2005 Posted: 0118 GMT (0918 HKT)

SHANGHAI/BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- New Chinese regulations governing Internet news content tighten the noose on freewheeling bloggers and aim to rein in the medium that is a growing source of information for the mainland's more than 100 million users.

Analysts say the rules issued by the Ministry of Information Industry on Sunday will not change much for authorized, licensed news outlets -- already under the thumb of state control -- but will extend controls to blogs and Internet-only news sites.

"For current media outlets, this is nothing more than a restating of the rules," said David Wolf, who heads Wolf Group Asia, a Beijing-based media and technology consultancy.

"This is aimed at bloggers and other individual and ad hoc journalists that are out there and that don't have a licensed organization."

The regulations target sites that publish fabricated information or pornography and forbid content that "harms national security, reveals state secrets, subverts political power (and) undermines national unity."

They also ban posts that "instigate illegal gatherings, formation of associations, marches, demonstrations, or disturb social order," indicating a lesson learned from anti-Japanese protests that swept China last April and which spread in part due to postings on Internet bulletin boards and chat rooms (Politically correct "protests")

China routinely blocks access to Internet sites on sensitive subjects such as self-ruled Taiwan, which China regards as its own, and the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrations which were crushed by the military with heavy loss of life.

Providers of online news and other services, from domestic players Sina Corp. and Sohu.com to international firms such as Yahoo Inc., also practice forms of self-censorship by blocking sites and prohibiting message posting on sensitive topics.

But the new regulations would curtail discussion on a wider variety of subjects, analysts said.

"Much more relevant is current affairs, social and political news. You don't necessarily have to touch taboo areas," said Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at the University of California at Berkeley.

[size=16Chat-room chatter[/size]
The rules also widen a campaign to step up control over the Internet that includes forcing bloggers and chat-room participants to use their real names and restricting university on-line discussion groups to students.

"Online is a new form of media. It's grown rapidly in the last five to 10 years, whereas print and broadcasting are easier to regulate," said Vivek Couto of Media Partners Asia.

China has directed another campaign at foreign media, which were taking advantage of newly relaxed laws to set up de facto television channels and production houses.

In that crackdown, China's broadcasting regulator banned the entry of new foreign-invested TV channels into the market and limited foreign media companies to one joint venture apiece in the TV program-making sector.

Analysts said the next few months should see an extension of regulations to mobile phone media, such as text messages, and a few public examples intended to create a climate of self-censorship on the Internet.

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/09/27/china.internet.reut/index.html