I really could not believe this news. I read it several times to make sure I was not misunderstanding it. Since I run many websites I had contemplated running a Chinese network hosted in China – and I’m so glad now that I didn’t do that. What a waste it would have been.
In short: China will be reviewing all personal Chinese websites for content; will ban any website they think has bad content (porn, anti-government, dissidents, etc.); and anyone registering a new domain will have to present business papers.
In the SAR (Special Administration Regions) of Hong Kong and Macau (Where I currently live) I can access all internet sites, but once I hop over the border to mainland China even some of my mainstream websites are usually blocked; like my hip hop and rap discussion forum.
In geek talk it’s called the “Great Firewall of China”. But now they are going to review all the individual websites that may criticize China; and can close your Chinese website if they feel the content is bad. And “bad” could be something of a political nature.
Since living in China I’m very sensitive to any news that is “anti-China”, or reports that any people in the US are telling China how they should run their country. Chinese history is full of Western expats coming to China to “show the Chinese how it’s done” because it’s “better for them anyway”.
But to touch the Holy Grail of the Information Super Highway. I cannot even fathom it…
Excerpt:
(FT) — China has banned individuals from registering internet domain names and launched a review of millions of existing personal websites in the toughest government censorship drive so far on the internet.
As of Monday, people applying to register a domain name in China must present a company chop and a business licence, the China Internet Network Information Center, a government-backed body, said in a statement.
Internet service providers said they had started to review their client base for potentially fraudulent or “harmful” individually owned sites. The term “harmful” is often used by the government as a catch-all that covers everything from pornography to anti-state activity.
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/12/15/china.internet.crackdown.ft/index.html