huridocs-tech China Issues Rules to Limit E-Mail and Web Content

FYI
Harsh Kapoor
--------------------

New York Times
International
January 27, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/01/biztech/articles/27china.html


China Issues Rules to Limit E-Mail and Web Content

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

BEIJING, Jan. 26-The Chinese government issued stern new regulations today
that were intended to control the release of information on the Internet,
underscoring the  government's love-hate relationship with cyberspace in a
country where the number  of Internet users is growing dramatically.

 The new regulations, published  today in the Communist Party  newspaper
People's Daily,  specifically govern the posting and  dissemination on the
Internet of  "state secrets," a vaguely defined  term that has been applied
by the  government to cover any information  whose release it has not
sanctioned.

 The pronouncement may have little  direct impact, because much of what  is
formally forbidden under the new  rules had already been illegal under
existing law, even if it was not  formally applied to the Internet.
Enforcement will be difficult in a  country that brims with Internet  cafes
and free e-mail services.  Officials will be cautious, too, about
aggressively dampening an industry  whose exuberant growth has been a
magnet for foreign investment.

 But many people here said the regulations served mostly as an extremely
loud warning that  could have inhibiting effects on the lively discussions
that crisscross China via e-mail and  chat-room postings.

 And certainly the regulations illustrate the government's resolve to tame,
if not totally  control, the unwieldy beast that is the Internet, which has
rapidly become a means for  Chinese to bypass the state-controlled media to
obtain and transmit information.

 The new regulations for the first time extend the state secrets law to the
Web, including chat  rooms and personal e-mail.

 For example, the use of e-mail to transmit what might be regarded as
secret information is  expressly forbidden. The regulations also put
operators of chat rooms on notice that they will  be held liable for their
content. And Internet sites are required to submit to "examination and
approval by the appropriate secrecy work offices," although the rules do
not specify what  that process involves.

 A basic principle of the new Computer Information Systems Internet Secrecy
Administrative  Regulations is that "whoever puts it on the Internet
assumes responsibility."

 The Internet has emerged not only as an effective propaganda tool of the
government, but  also as a potent means to organize and publicize popular
discontent.

 It has been used by overseas dissidents to communicate with kindred
spirits in China and by  the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement to
organize protests.

 Last year, a computer technician was sentenced  to two years in prison for
providing 30,000  Chinese e-mail addresses to dissidents abroad.

 Last week, a group of disgruntled farmers in a  small village in Anhui
province in central China  turned to the Internet and e-mail to expose a
corrupt local Communist Party chief.

 China now has nearly nine million Internet users, up from two million a
year ago, according  to a survey by the government's China Internet
Information Center. But some say the nine  million figure may be too low.
The information center also said China had 35.6 million  e-mail accounts.

 In recent months, government officials have repeatedly said that they were
planning to issue  new regulations to impose further controls on both the
content of and the financial  arrangements behind the Internet in China.

 The regulations today are the first, but probably not the last, effort to
spell out what that  might entail.

 Another law, adopted quietly last fall, requires all the people who use
encryption software to  register with the government by Monday. The
software is used to encode e-mail messages so  that they can not be read by
anyone but the intended recipient.

 Financial regulations will follow soon, officials said, and those rules
are expected to restrict  in some fashion foreign investment in the Chinese
Internet. The government plans to require  all Internet companies based
here to obtain government approval before going public in  foreign markets,
The Wall Street Journal reported today.

 The new regulations were issued by the State Secrecy  Bureau, a
little-known agency whose exact function the main  government news office
was unable to describe, despite  repeated requests. Internet users and
Internet companies alike  have been aware all along that they risked arrest
if they used  the Internet to spread sensitive information. Still, some
have  taken advantage of the relative anonymity of the Internet to  speak
out against government policy.

 In the last year, the government has occasionally arrested  people for
posting illegal information on the Web. That has  included members of the
Falun Gong movement who posted  pictures of followers whom the police had
reportedly  tortured.

 "I do not think it will have a big effect," Guo Liang, who  studies the
Internet at the Chinese Academy of Social  Sciences, said. "People already
know that you couldn't use  the Internet to reveal state secrets or do
things that are  illegal."

 Also, provisional regulations have been circulating since early 1998,
according to a Web site  of the local Secrecy Bureau in Lianyungang, a
small city in coastal Jiangsu Province.

 Although two years ago, some Chinese Web sites carried news items culled
from foreign  wire services, today Chinese commercial sites take their
political news only from the official  state media or avoid such topics
altogether, focusing instead on sports or entertainment.

 "These regulations will not have much of an effect on us now, since we
already conform to  these kind of requirements," said Paul Jin, deputy
executive general manager at Sina.com,  one of China's most popular sites.

 Sina.com, like most Chinese sites, screens entries into its chat rooms to
make sure that they  are appropriate and not "offensive to the government."

 But Web experts said enforcement of the regulations was probably
impractical in a country  where the volume of Internet communications is
exploding.

 Although the authorities certainly have the technical ability to read
e-mail, and do at least  sometimes monitor the mail of known dissidents,
experts say the government cannot keep up  with all messages or necessarily
trace them from particular individuals. Many users still gain  access the
Internet through computers used by many individuals like those in Internet
cafes,  universities or even government offices.





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