China's challenge: censoring 100 million bloggers

Stuart Corner
Monday, 03 July 2006 10:16

IT Policy - Regulation

Faced with explosive growth in blogging the Chinese Government is moving to tighten its control of blogs and search engines.
According to the official Xinhua news agency, supervision of blogs and search engines, which it described as "the most active parts of China information industry," will be tightened by the government.

The report quoted Cai Wu, director of the Information Office of the State Council, saying: "As more and more illegal and unhealthy information spreads through the blog and search engine, we will take effective measures to put the BBS, blog and search engine under control."

According to Xinhua, the Chines Government launched a project on February 21 "to purify the environment of internet and mobile communication network through a series of measures within a year."

China is known to have some of the most sophisticated Internet monitoring and censorship technologies in the world, but its government is facing a monumental task: A report prepared by the Qinghua (Tsinghua) University in Beijing predicted that the number of bloggers would pass the 100 million mark in 2007. This would be almost the total current Internet user population. The report noted that the word "blog" was one of the most searched words on the Internet in China last year.

A survey by Baidu.com, a major Chinese search engine, showed that there are 36.82 million blog sites in China today. Zhang Xiaorong, strategy development director of Bokee, one of the first blog service suppliers in China, was reported earlier this month saying that his company was adding about 100,000 blogs a day.

There is no public information on Chinese Government's Internet surveillance programme, but various organiations have attempted some analysis. A  study conducted between 2004 and 2005 by the Opennet Initiative found that "China's Internet filtering regime is the most sophisticated effort of its kind in the world. Compared to similar efforts in other states, China's filtering regime is pervasive, sophisticated, and effective. It comprises multiple levels of legal regulation and technical control. It involves numerous state agencies and thousands of public and private personnel. It censors content transmitted through multiple methods, including Web pages, Web logs, on-line discussion forums, university bulletin board systems, and e-mail messages."

The Opennet Initiative said: "While it is difficult to describe this widespread filtering with precision, our research documents a system that imposes strong controls on its citizens' ability to view Internet content. Unlike the filtering systems in many other countries, China's filtering regime appears to be carried out at various control points and also to be dynamic, changing along a variety of axes over time...These complexities also make it very difficult to render a clear and accurate picture of Internet filtering in China at any given moment."