What Online Information Does China Regulate?
China has issued, and updated, general regulations for what information is not permitted on the web. According to Chase and Mulvenon’s RAND report, “You’ve got dissent: Chinese dissident use of the Internet and Beijing’s counter- strategies”, “since 1995, the Chinese government has promulgated a blizzard of rules covering nearly every aspect of the Internet market.”
Regulations issued in 1997, known as the “Computer Information Network and Internet Security, Protection and Management Regulations”, are notable as they prohibit 9 broad information categories:
1. Inciting to resist or breaking the Constitution or laws or the implementation
of administrative regulations.
2. Inciting to overthrow the government or the socialist system.
3. Inciting division of the country, harming national unification.
4. Inciting hatred or discrimination among nationalities or harming
the unity of the nationalities.
5. Making falsehoods or distorting the truth, or spreading rumors
destroying the order of society.
6. Promoting feudal superstitions, sexually suggestive material,
gambling, violence, or murder.
7. Inciting terrorism or inciting others to criminal activity; openly
insulting other people or distorting the truth to slander people.
8. Injuring the reputation of state organs.
9. Engaging in other activities against the Constitution, laws, or administrative
regulations.
September 2004 brought a re-issuance of these regulations, along with 2 new rules, which Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) dubbed the “The 11 commandments of the Internet in China”. According to RSF, the two new rules issued are: It is forbidden to encourage illegal gatherings, strikes, etc to create public disorder; and It is forbidden to organise activities under illegal social associations or organisations.
The broadness of these regulations have been used to widely block, filter, censor information on the web, and at times, to arrest those who post such content. Specific topics or sites that have been forbidden by China include: Falun Gong; Tiannenmen Square; Taiwan; nationalist references to Mongolian, Uygher, and Tibet; democrarcy and dissedence; foreign government sites; foreign news sites; and religion. The empirical testing and analysis conducted by Zittrain and Edelman confirms that websites with this data are blocked in China. It found that also blocked are sites referencing to certain health issues, such as AIDS, sexually explicit content, and even educational sites, including US universities.