BEIJING – A leading Chinese Internet regulator has vowed to reduce
anonymity in China's portion of cyberspace, calling for requirements
that people use their real names when buying a mobile phone or going
online, according to a human rights group.
In an address to the national legislature in April,
Wang Chen, director of the State Council Information Office, called for
perfecting the extensive system of censorship the government uses to
manage the fast-evolving Internet, according to a text of the speech
obtained by New York-based Human Rights in China.
China's regime has a complicated relationship with
the freewheeling Internet, reflected in its recent standoff with Google
over censorship of search results. China this week confirmed it had
renewed Google's license to operate, after the company agreed to stop
automatically rerouting users to its Hong Kong site, which is not
subject to China's online censorship.
The Internet is China's most open and lively forum
for discussion, despite already pervasive censorship, but stricter
controls could constrain users. The country's online population has
surged past 400 million, making it the world's largest.
Chen's comments were reported only briefly when they
were made in April. Human Rights in China said the government quickly
removed a full transcript posted on the legislature's website. But the
group said it found an unexpurgated text and the discrepancies show that
Beijing is wary that its push for tighter information control might
prove unpopular.
Wang said holes that needed to be plugged included
ways people could post comments or access information anonymously,
according to the transcript published this week in the group's magazine
China Rights Forum.
"We will make the Internet real name system a reality
as soon as possible, implement a nationwide cell phone real name
system, and gradually apply the real name registration system to online
interactive processes," the journal quoted Wang as saying.
The restriction on cell phones apparently would be
aimed at China's 233 million mobile Web users.
As part of that Internet "real name system," forum
moderators would have to use their real names as would users of online
bulletin boards, and anonymous comments on news stories would be
removed, Wang is quoted as saying.
The State Council Information Office did not immediately respond
to a faxed request asking whether certain sections of Wang's address to
the legislature were altered in the official transcript.
Wang's comments are in line with recent government
statements that indicate a growing uneasiness toward the multitude of
opinions found online. A Beijing-backed think tank this month accused
the U.S. and other Western governments of using social-networking sites
such as Facebook to spur political unrest and called for stepped-up
scrutiny.
China has blocked sites like Facebook, Twitter and
YouTube, although technologically savvy users can easily jump the
so-called "Great Firewall" with proxy servers or other alternatives.
Websites about human rights and dissidents are also routinely banned.