China: Anonymity forbidden

The increasing number of mobile users in China has lead to regulations that are stricter online. Now China asks to utilize their actual names as they surf the net and communicate via newsgroups, social networking platforms etc. Their official goal would be to enhance the general caliber of the web.

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China continues to be recognized to apply heavy surveillance and censorship with its Great Firewall (which is the Golden Shield Project). After the recent upgrade of its own firewall that has resulted on behalf of VPN service providers in trouble, China becomes stricter with surveil and takes control to a whole new amount. Therefore, what this means is that every time a Chinese citizen wishes to get online and also chat with buddies on newsgroups or socialize or express his beliefs via a blog, he’ll have to do that using his actual name and all the private information demanded.

The Cyberspace Administration brought these new regulations now plus the become successful from March 1st of 2015 (that is truly in under a month). As it’s maintained by the Government, the fake reports have been leading to significant negative consequences so far and, to be more special, they have: „polluted the Internet ecology, hurt the interests of the majorities and severely offended core socialist values.“ These accusations are serious, as you can see. In the light of such consequences, China felt compelled to respond and safeguard its citizens‘ interests.

The same regulations were enforced again in 2012 back in China if you remember. This is when the Twitter-like stage of Weibo was used for shedding light inside the Government’s officials and it to instances of corruption. The micro-blogging service was obliged to ask for its users‘ real names, after the events that took place and exposed the officials of China. The regulations were applied to „ensure internet information security, safeguard the lawful rights and interests of citizens, legal entities or alternative organizations and safeguard national security and social public interests“ Xinhua News Agency had reported back then.

The major concern of the Government in China is none apart from the mobile users within the country. Based on the report in the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) , in December 2014 there were 557 million mobile users in China and that is an astonishingly big number to contemplate. Commanding these Internet users appears like a very demanding job and apparently bringing foil everywhere around the net and permitting no room for anonymity might do the trick for China.

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