China Tightens Rules For Educational BBSs

An anonymous reader writes "China is tightening control over online BBS run by colleges and universities. Educational institutions in China have received direct orders from the Chinese Ministry of Education requiring their BBSs to take actions including access limitation and registering users by their real identities, as well as strict content censorship. The admin team of the BBS of Nanjing University has refused to obey the order and has been dismissed."

Comments

Same ol', same ol'

[PIPBoy3000]

It seems these days that when I read about China censorship, it's merely a continuation of policies that have existed for years.

What's remarkable to me is that the admin group refused and was merely dismissed. A couple decades ago, I'd expect them to be jailed at the least.

Admins with backbone

[Rightcoast]

It really took guts for them to stand up to this, and I wonder if there will be fallout for them the rest of the world will never hear. It says they were merely dismissed, but can you trust that infomation?

Re:Admins with backbone

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure the reckless CCP government will do whatever they like to punish those who dare to stand up to them by any means.

When SARS striked at the beginning, the central CCP goverment and Canton Province officials tried hard to hide every details about it. A group of brave people, including Yu Huafeng and Cheng Yizhong, made noise about the frightenning facts. Eventually, the government retreated by high pressure from inside and outside of the poor country.

But when everything settled down and people forgot about SARS, the government tried and prosecuted those peole for obviouly rediculous excuses. Mr. Yu Huafeng, one of a handful brave Chinese intellectuals, is still in jail.

I myself, a shameless Chinese coward.

A difference?

[bird603568]

In my PUBLIC high school, they censora crap load of webpages, ie(slashdot, most wikipedia topics, and duh the porn and game site) Whats the difference between PUBLIC schools doing it and China doing it?

Government sanctioned identity theft

[Skevin]

Funny you should mention that incident, because it presented an easy solution for one of China's biggest problems. (Sorry for getting OT here)

China had effected scrict financial penalties for having more than one child sometine last century. Unfortunately, the typical agricultural sector family unit survives by having cheap labor, in the form of extra children. However, in order not to incur legal penalties, these families often hide those extra kids. As these kids grew up, it quickly became apparent that these kids had no identity, and without identity, they wouldn't be able to find work or acquire government benefits. The PRC refused to ackowledge their existence.

Then, one day, the whole Tiananmen Square incident came about, and the PRC realized they could kill two birds with one stone. Rallying and arming as many "black children" [literal translation] as they could find on short notice, the PRC made a deal: "Kill one student protestor, and you may take possession of his identity. We will then cover the rest of your tuition and housing." After the bloodbath was over, all the "black children" were now legitimate, and since all students were accounted for, "no one" had really died. To this day, China can logistically claim there were no casualties in the incident. And what of the victim's families? They got a letter from school saying that their kids were striking off on their own and didn't want to see them again.

China's very good at understating a lot of facts. (I should know - I still have relatives there.)

Solomon Kevin Chang

Re:This just in:

[MightyMartian]

This didn't start with Communism. Chinese civilization has a long history of pursuing social order. The intensity with which Western countries tend to defend and rationalize individual liberties would confuse many Chinese from many historical epochs. To them, an authoritarian regime which makes these sorts of dictates is the norm. The Communists are simply the latest in a long line of rulers to do this.

The slashdot summary is full of lies

[northcat]

The whole slashdot summary is a big lie. Here is a quick summary of what I can gather from the article:

1. The chat rooms operated by the Tsinghua University have been closed down for non-students and, obviously, students require to indentify themselves.
2. NO BBS has been asked to get identification from its users. No BBS have been asked to censor themselves (at least not in a new development and not in the context of this article)
3. Only Tsinghua University has been asked to get identification from its students to access its chatrooms. No other university has been asked to do this (in the context of this article, of course).
4. New rules have been passed which, according to TFA, 'will hold chat room operators liable for any "objectionable content" on their sites.' So it must be speaking of keeping "objectional content" away from websites of chatrooms or some online forums. And this need not be political content but just things like porn. But keep in mind that TFA is full of opinion [like calling the move an effort "to limit the exchange of ideas on the Internet" and "the Communist Party's Propaganda Department". And it states opinions as facts including it in the same sentences as facts instead of stating it separately. Like "China's most popular online chat room, hosted by Beijing's Tsinghua University, has been closed to non-students to limit the exchange of ideas on the Internet" and "the Communist Party's Propaganda Department has increased its monitoring of cyberspace for subversive trends, the report said." (emphasis mine)] so it's hard to distinguish what is fact and what is opinion. TFA continues to say that " As a result, Weblog portals have discouraged their users from discussing political or sensitive topics." But it's just the editors' opinion and it doesn't have any recent developments to back it up. (Maybe just the old complaints)
5. TFA also says the Ministry of Education has ' issued a circular on strengthening "political thought" at universities'. Again, you can't tell what is fact and what is the editors' opinion.
6. Nowhere does the article mention anything about the "dismissal of the admin team of Nanjing Univesity". This might be another article not linked in summary or this might be just a lie by the poster.

The summary is just one big lie trying to make China look bad, written by someone who hates China. (And it groups a lot of stories together) And even TFA is not very unbiased. Proof that Slashdot has no journalistic integrity or ethics and occasionally spews out complete lies.