China has shut down more than 13,000 websites since the beginning of 2015 in a continuous campaign against “illegal information” online, state news agency Xinhua reported on Sunday.
Tighten Control of the Internet
The closures are part of Beijing’s moves to tighten control of the internet and as it previously explained, "maintain a clean cyberspace". Closer official scrutiny of online content began five years ago. Authorities maintained they were merely cutting out pornography and violent content online.
Goodbye Skype?!
video from SCMP
China’s internet censorship juggernaut rolls on without its former cyber tsar in November. Beijing is continuing to tighten its grip on cyberspace with the removal of internet phone services, including Microsoft’s popular Skype application, from China’s app stores .
Nearly 10 million user accounts
are closed!
Across the country, the authorities have enforced mass cancellations of the licences of net operators and closed down websites.
The Cyberspace Administration of China summoned more than 2,200 website operators in China for talks, and closed nearly 10 million user accounts “that had violated relevant law and regulations”, Xinhua reported.
It added that the internet regulators had targeted all platforms including websites, mobile apps, online forums, blogs, microblogs, social networks, instant messaging platforms and live broadcasts.
China rolled out a controversial cybersecurity law this June that among other things, requires any company dealing with China to store all “critical data and the data from critical information infrastructure” on the mainland. The data cannot be easily transferred out of the country, something that foreign businesses argue will have a negative impact on them.
The Xinhua report also quoted the vice-chairman of the country’s top legislative body, as saying:
The [National People’s Congress] standing committee launched an inspection of enforcement of a new law less than three months after it is in effect, which is unprecedented. These moves have a powerful deterrent effect.
Foreign firms watch out!
China’s controls on data flows in and out of the country are likely to become even stricter, as shown by draft measures issued in September. Companies in China are already required to store data on local servers, but the new rules appear to require any company doing business with a Chinese entity, even those based overseas, to leave China-related data in China.
Like Wolf Warrior 2, China is reaching out beyond its borders – and this matters to any company dealing with China, because infringing the Cybersecurity Law could get you fined, detained, or even imprisoned.
The internet security
is so important!
That internet security concerns were closely intertwined with “the party’s long-term hold on power, the country’s long-term peace and stability, socio-economic development and the people’s personal interests”.
It added that the National People’s Congress had commissioned a survey where more than 90% of interviewees supported government efforts to manage the internet, with 63.5% of them believing that in recent years, there had been an obvious reduction in harmful online content.
Source:SCMP
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