Yesterday, the State Council Information Office and the Ministry of Information Industry introduced new measures on regulating online news services in order to combat the publication of false information, pornography, gambling and violence by online news sites. See http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-09/26/content_3543389.htm. The new regulations came into effect immediately. A spokesperson with the Information office stressed that the new regulations are aimed at deterring the dissemination of unhealthy news stories. Under the new regulations, online news site which publish false information will be fined up to 30,000 Yuan (USD 3,700). According to Xinhua, “the regulations provided that news sites set up by news organizations but publishing not just their own stories, and sites by other organizations featuring news stories must get approval from the State Council Information Office. Sites by news organizations that only carry their own stories should register at the main office or provincial information offices.”
This is not the first time that the Chinese government promulgated regulations to monitor the information dissemination on the Internet. The first of these rules were enacted in 2000 but were quickly outdated by the tremendous growth of the Internet. Currently, there are 103 million people who have Internet access in the mainland, as compared to 135 million in the U.S.
While the intention of the new regulations is to make online news more reliable, the definitions of the elements of the rule remains nebulous. For example, Xinhua pointed out that only "healthy and civilized news" and "information that is beneficial to the improvement of the quality of the nation, to economic development, and conducive to social progress" should be published, but the definitions of these terms are lacking.
In order for the new regulations to have teeth, law makers will need to provide more guidance and clarity to the public. Otherwise, well-meaning regulations like this will be misused to chill the freedom of information and speech in China which is vital to the growth of a civil society. Regulations like this should undergo strict scrutiny by the courts rather than to be manipulated as a pretext to serve a different end.