China Wants to Control Internet Even More - China Real Time Report - WSJ

China already boasts the world’s most sophisticated Internet censorship system. According to the Chinese Communist Party, it isn’t good enough.

In an explanation of its reform blueprint released late Friday, the party said that the Internet poses “a new comprehensive challenge” to the country’s stability.

Though much of the language within it reflects previous boilerplate statements, the explanation specifically names Tencent Holdings‘s mobile messaging application WeChat among the different social media tools it says pose problems.

“Following the increasing power of online media, Internet media and industry management has lagged far behind the quick changes that have come with its development. In particular [we] face the rapid growth of social networking and instant communication tools, like Weike and WeChat, which disseminate information rapidly, have a large influence and broad coverage, and have a strong ability to mobilize society,” the explanation in part reads.

It isn’t clear what the document meant when it referred to Weike, though in the past it was sometimes used to refer to Twitter-like microblogs such as Sina’s Weibo. Tencent didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment late Friday.

The statement goes on to add “how [we] strengthen the legal system and public opinion guidance, guarantee the orderly spread of information online, national security, and social stability, has already become a real and prominent problem.”

Though officials have recently discussed the government’s opinions about the dangers social media poses to China, the explanation marks a rare high-level and unified statement about the party’s view of the Chinese Internet in recent years.

The explanation also enumerates a number of “obvious flaws” in the government’s current Internet “management system,” including inconsistent, conflicting and multiheaded oversight and function that gives it a “low effectiveness.”

The statement is a strong indication that a recent crackdown on social media in China is set to continue. In recent months the government has warned and punished a number of well-known social media commentators and also punished accounts linked to the spread of what it says are rumors and personal attacks online. Critics say the moves are aimed at quashing dissent and the discussion of sensitive topics online.

Though the statement is short on any tangible steps the government will likely take to improve the system, one line from the reform blueprint points a specific problem the government will likely work to address. At one point the statement says China needs “a robust system to manage sudden occurrences on the Internet.” The use of “sudden occurrences” likely refers to the rapid spread of discussion of unpredictable events over social media.

Analysts in the past have said that censors often struggle to keep up with frank and at times angry comments that follow events like the 2011 high-speed train crash in the eastern city of Wenzhou. Though censorship on social media platforms like Weibo have become increasingly fast and automated in recent years, the language suggests the party still expects further improvements.

Despite the occasionally specific diagnosis of problems, the statement was light on concrete actions that will be taken. “China will improve the mechanism set for preventing and cracking down on crimes related to the Internet and better handle emergencies in cyberspace in order to form an online public opinion that is positively guided and administrated in accordance with the law,” it said.

Just how that is done is unlikely to get much clearer any time soon.

–Paul Mozur. Follow him on Twitter @paulmozur

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