Government plans to take part in ‘supervising’ online news media

By Han Jie
Oct 16, 2009 – 12:34:53 PM

Boxun Exclusive—- During an internal conference held by the Publicity Department yesterday, an officer has revealed partial contents of the ‘Internal management and control policy proposal’, which meaning the Chinese government is planning to interfere the online news world.

The belows are several points made by the representatives of Publicity Department

Part of this proposal is targeting local internet control. Leading by the Publicity Department, together with State Council Information Office and the Police Department, series of policies will be launched to practices the political censorship system; continuously reduce ‘netizens’ communication activities on main websites(before the National Day), to be precise, is to control exposure of public opinions. The proposal also points out there is a need to have professional scholars providing suggestions about contents that should be posted on each main website.
The Publicity Department also said base on records from the past 3 years, it is obviously clear that internet has becom e a main force fight s against corruption. Discussion about the issues are carried out through blogs or forums and ‘surreptitiously’ supported by major websites. A study provided by the State Council Information Office shows articles not being ‘publicized’ or ‘concerned’ by online news websites usually cause limited attentions.
One third of the proposal is focusing on oversea Chinese news websites. It suggests intensively blocking these websites resulting local readers to abandon online news and forcing online news sites to shut down. Another way to ‘manipulate’ online news activities is to complete the purchases of oversea news websites, but this method might not be applicable because it is believed that oversea news websites would contend with government actions and create more and more branch websites.

P.S. One of Boxun’s exclusive reports posted in January mentioned about government’s plan of getting involved in managing online news service organizations.
Full article in Chinese at: http://news.boxun.com/news/gb/china/2009/10/200910160937.shtml