[x-pubpol] China Cracks Down on Bloggers and ‘Excessive’ Entertainment

[Joly MacFie]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/27/world/asia/china-imposes-new-limits-on-entertainment-and-bloggers.html

... party leaders signaled new curbs on China’s short-message, Twitter-like
microblogs, an Internet sensation that has mushroomed in less than two years
into a major — and difficult to control — source of whistle-blowing.
Microbloggers, some of whom have attracted millions of followers, have been
exposing scandals and official malfeasance, including an attempted cover-up
of a recent high-speed rail accident, with astonishing speed and popularity.

On Wednesday, the Communist Party’s Central Committee called in a report on
its annual meeting for an “Internet management system” that would strictly
regulate social network and instant-message systems, and punish those who
spread “harmful information.” The focus of the meeting, held this month, was
on culture and ideology.

Analysts and employees inside the private companies that manage the
microblogs say party officials are pressing for increasingly strict and
swift censorship of unapproved opinions. Perhaps most telling, the
authorities are discussing requiring microbloggers to register accounts with
their real names and identification numbers instead of the anonymous handles
now in wide use.

Although China’s most famous bloggers tend to use their own names, requiring
everyone to do so would make online whistle-blowing and criticism of
officialdom — two public services not easily duplicated elsewhere —
considerably riskier.




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