![\"58ded628-0e66-4ade-a359-0d5af514e969\"](\"http:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/files\/2015\/05\/58ded628-0e66-4ade-a359-0d5af514e969.jpeg\")
<\/a>Netizens at an Internet cafe in China’s Zhejiang province, Nov. 2, 2012.\nAFP<\/p>\n
Tough new regulations requiring online publishers to attend “chats” with officials and police if they post content deemed false or inappropriate have raised questions about the increasingly strong-armed role of China’s Internet regulator.<\/p>\n
China’s Cyberspace Administration on Tuesday issued the rules, which set out a serious of violations of rules on web content that could prompt a summons to “drink tea,” a technique traditionally employed by the state security police to warn, interrogate, and intimidate rights activists and dissidents.<\/p>\n
Sites deemed to have published banned content\u2014which might include “false information, pornography, and rumors”\u2014will be obliged to send a representative to such meetings from June 1, the official Xinhua news agency reported.<\/p>\n
On Sept. 1, 2013, China’s highest judicial authorities issued a directive criminalizing online “rumor-mongering” in a move widely seen as targeting critical comments and negative news on the country’s hugely popular social media sites.<\/p>\n
Until this year, the authorities have mostly targeted individuals under the new rules. But the Cyberspace Administration summoned high-ranking executives from Internet giants Sina and Netease for “tea” in February and April, “to urge them to correct their violations,” Xinhua said.<\/p>\n
“There is a high possibility that those websites spreading rumors and pornography, leaking user information, and permitting users to set up illegal account names, will be invited for a chat,” official media quoted Cyberspace Administration official Fan Li as saying.<\/p>\n
“If problems are not rectified after they have been summoned several times, [Internet portals] will be given heavier punishment,” Fan warned.<\/p>\n
‘Strengthening, correcting’<\/p>\n
According to Fan, the new system will strengthen “guidance and correction of errors,” rather than relying on a simple punishment system alone.<\/p>\n
Sites that violate guidelines on content, whether by editing, posting, re-posting,or deleting news copy, including news organizations that either publish or do not publish certain items in return for cash, can expect a summons under the new regime.<\/p>\n
According to the English-language China Daily newspaper, “‘Providing tea’ is a mild way of saying that cyber administrations at all levels will arrange meetings with Internet companies that have seriously violated the law and regulations, issue a warning and urge the adjustment of content.”<\/p>\n
Government-initiated “chats” will become a regular management tool in managing Internet news service providers, who will be required to take action on the basis of what is said in them, the paper said.<\/p>\n
Online content providers cannot decline the “invitation,” it said, adding that at least two clearly identified law enforcement officers would be required to attend each session and make a record of the “chat.”<\/p>\n
2015-04-29 Netizens at an Internet cafe … Continue reading
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