China defends internet controls on political content

Jun 8, 2010, 9:27 GMT

Beijing - China on Tuesday defended its strict control of the internet and said the posting of political content 'endangering state security' or 'subverting state power' would continue to be defined as a criminal act.

'The Chinese government attaches great importance to protecting the safe flow of internet information, actively guides people to manage websites in accordance with the law and use the internet in a wholesome and correct way,' an official report setting policies for management of the internet said.

'No organization or individual may produce, duplicate, announce or disseminate information having the following content: being against the cardinal principles set forth in the constitution; endangering state security, divulging state secrets, subverting state power and jeopardizing national unification,' the report said.

It said other prohibited online content included 'damaging state honour and interests,' 'jeopardizing ethnic unity,' spreading 'heretical or superstitious ideas' and 'disrupting social order and stability.'

Chinese law also forbids online spreading of 'rumours,' pornographic or other obscene material, and content linked to illegal gambling, terrorism or other crime, the report said.

The constitution, written by the ruling Communist Party and mentioned in Tuesday's report, holds that the 'basic task of the nation is to concentrate its effort on socialist modernization.'

One of its key basic principles reads: 'Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China and the guidance of Marxism-Leninism ... the Chinese people of all nationalities will continue to adhere to the people's democratic dictatorship and the socialist road.'

The government employs tens of thousands of internet police to try to keep content broadly in line with Communist Party ideology. The internet police block hundreds of websites that are deemed politically sensitive.

Internet service providers and telecommunication firms are required to comply with government censorship rules and oversee the activities of China's estimated 400 million internet users.

The routine censorship was highlighted earlier this year when US internet giant Google Inc diverted its main Chinese website to an uncensored one in Hong Kong after it discovered cyber attacks that originated in China and targeted Google servers as well as those of other Western companies.

Google said the attacks, in which the Chinese government denied any involvement, included attempts to compromise Chinese human rights activists' e-mail accounts.