China enacted new rules that beef up disclosure requirements for Internet users, in Beijing’s latest move to get a tighter grip on its voluble and increasingly restive online community. Senior members of the National People’s Congress, China’s rubber-stamp parliament, approved the rules Friday as part of an effort to strengthen personal privacy laws, the state-run Xinhua news agency said. The rules, unveiled Monday, received a slew of positive coverage in state-run media and were widely expected to be enacted. The rules require Internet users to use their real names when signing up for Internet services from network and service providers.
They follow rules that went into force in March that required users of Chinese social-media services to disclose their real names to providers, though implementation has been hobbled by the size of their massive user bases as well as technical problems. The latest rules also require service providers to remove posts with illegal information, to save them and to forward them to authorities. The rules weren’t explicit on what constitutes illegal information or which authorities offenses should be reported to.
The broad language is one issue with the new rules, said Isaac Mao, principal researcher at research group Sharism Lab who has long been involved with China’s Internet industry. “Even a local department can use this as easily,” he said. The biggest impact of the rules could be on social-media providers such as Sina Corp, SINA +2.23% which runs the popular Twitter-like Weibo microblogging service. Sina officials didn’t respond to requests for comment Friday.
Sina and other social-media companies saw their shares drop Monday, when the proposed rules were unveiled. In its third-quarter results announcement, Sina said it had more than 400 million registered accounts. China’s online community has become a challenge for the government, with services like Weibo acting as a sort of national town hall in a country where newspapers and television broadcasters are strictly regulated.
Although companies and government officials work to remove what they consider disruptive content, Weibo users have been successful in rooting out corruption among lower-level government and Communist Party officials. “Is it the online anticorruption exposés that have made officials determined to pass the law to protect their information?” asked one Weibo user posting under the name William Lu. Another added, “On the one hand, anticorruption efforts are highly encouraged online, while on the other hand, online speech freedom is strictly oppressed.” Li Fei, a member of the congress’s Standing Committee, said the law wouldn’t impact public efforts to tamp down corruption. “Some people worry about whether the law will affect the public’s ability to express their opinion and criticism online and expose corruption.
This is unnecessary,” Mr. Li said, according to an official transcript. “We still call on the public to expose any corruption by all means after the law comes out. The illegal and corrupted will be punished,” he added. Chinese government officials have said the new rules are designed to protect the online privacy of users, an issue that other nations are grappling with as well. Chinese officials have urged companies and government agencies to do more to protect personal data after a spate of high-profile leaks since last year.
In April, authorities said they arrested more than 1,700 people they suspected of involvement in stealing or misusing personal information. “People can feel safe when their online information is safe,” said a Weibo poster using the name Ling Xuejiu. The new rules passed by the congress also require companies to take unspecified countermeasures when data are leaked, and also include measures to reduce spam to mobile phones and email addresses. ( By Carlos Tejada from www.online.wsj.com – Dinny McMahon contributed to this article )
