The Chinese Government has set out new restrictions on websites that provide news stories or bulletin boards or send news to mobile phones to prevent them publishing stories that are "against national security and public interest."
"We need to better regulate the online news services with the emergence of so many unhealthy news stories that will easily mislead the public," a spokesman with the information office told the China Daily.
Those sites that do not comply could be fined or closed down.
The new rules, announced by the Xinhua news agency, also oblige news site operators to register with the State Council Information Office. News sites that publish only their own stories can register with provincial information offices instead.
According to Wired News, the agency warned that only "healthy and civilized news and information that is beneficial to the improvement of the quality of the nation, beneficial to its economic development and conducive to social progress" will be permitted.
What this means in practice is unclear.
China has a reputation for cracking down on dissent, and has been gradually extending its control over the internet. Foreign news sites are often blocked, home-grown dissenting web pages quickly vanish from computer screens and search terms such as “equality”, “Tibet” and “Taiwan” give very different results when entered in China compared to other countries.
According to Reporters Without Borders, which lobbies for press freedom, “These new rules, announced with a fanfare by the official media, are certainly more intended to frighten internet-users than to codify the use of the net.”
Commenting on the rules on its website, the rights group said that there was nothing really new in the restrictions, but that “these moves to filter the internet are nevertheless a sign that the internet frightens those in power, in particular during a period of ever greater social unrest.”
