This week, the China Internet Network Information Center’s (CNNIC) released its 35th annual “China Internet Development Statistics Report,” in which it highlights online usage in China. What it found was an incredible amount of Chinese citizens accessing the Internet in a country that imposes intense regulations on the web.
According to the report, China now has more than 649 million web users, surpassing the entire population of the United States by two to one. What has contributed to this massive increase has been the growth of mobile Internet as 80 percent use smartphones and tablets to access the Internet.
Despite the immense figure of connected Chinese citizens, it still means more than half of the country lacks the proper access to the Internet. The country maintains a population of more than 1.4 billion people.
China imposes stricter online regulations
As of Mar. 1, 2015, China will prohibit Internet accounts from impersonating people or organizations and implement a requirement that forces people to use their real names when creating an online account, reports Reuters.
The federal government has already instituted this mandate, but it hasn’t been enforced successfully and compliance has been rather minimal. This is just another layer of China’s tightening controls over the Internet, which have been exacerbated since President Xi Jinping entered office in 2013.
The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), an Internet watchdog in Beijing, outlined that the ban would include accounts that claim to be the government, domestic state bodies and foreign leaders like U.S. President Barack Obama or Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
“We’ll take the real-identity system as a principle and our major work this year, and extend the system to other online industries, such as forums and microblogging platforms,” said Xu Feng, director of the CAC, in a statement reported by China Daily.
With the rise of social media, there have been an abundance of parody accounts created to make fun of public officials. However, the CAS argues this is inappropriate because sometimes it can lead to a “vulgar culture” and perpetrate fraud by pretending to be a member of the Communist Party. It further defended its program by purporting it’s trying to combat pornography, terrorism and other unhealthy practices.
Internet companies will be responsible for enforcing this mandate, such Tencent Holdings, an instant messaging service; Weibo Corp., a microblog website similar to Twitter; and various other online forums. Tech experts say this would be extremely difficult for these companies to do because monitoring and enforcing such rules would require a dedicated staff and a vast amount of resources.
It remains unclear as to what exactly the punishment would be if a user is found to be using a parody account. One of the only acts of recourse listed is to deactivate the accounts of violators.
Critics say this is just one step closer to limiting expression and speech.
“This is just a small part of a series of measures intended to stifle the space for online creativity,” said author Murong Xuecun, whose real name is Hao Qun, in an interview with the New York Times. “The government realizes it can’t be done in a day. It will be a very slow process.”
