China Explains Internet Situation In Whitepaper

eldavojohn writes "In a new whitepaper, China has declared the Internet to be 'the crystallization of human wisdom' and officially issued what appears to be a defense of its policies on Web censorship, while at the same time making contradicting statements like 'Chinese citizens fully enjoy freedom of speech on the Internet' and (in the same paper) 'Laws and regulations clearly prohibit the spread of information that contains content subverting state power, undermining national unity, [or] infringing upon national honor and interests.' The paper also claims some questionable superlatives such as 'China is one of the countries suffering most from hacking.' On the positive side, this 31-page document might be offered as an operating guide for businesses, like Google, looking to understand exactly what the law is surrounding the Internet in China. The document is a rare glimpse of transparency in China's regulations."

Comments

Free-ish Speech

[Rotworm]

Do Chinese people enjoy freedom of speech on the Internet in a substantively different way than we do?
I can say whatever I want, except things that are against the law to say. It's the same system in China, but they have different laws. I'm no expert, but I think the only meaningful difference is that citizens cannot criticise the government -and don't get me wrong, that's a big difference, but they report they are trying a system where the nation is unified. Maybe I disagree with that approach, but I think it's suspect to say that China opposes freedom of speech when they only differ on a single issue.
Further, there are many laws here in Canada that limit speech, that don't have a corresponding law in China. Specifically, I'm thinking about race.

Re:Free-ish Speech

[OldHawk777]

Why a 15 digit prime number with a leading zero?
100010001010011, 17491, 4453

Questionable conclusion

[fishexe]

On the positive side, this 31-page document might be offered as an operating guide for businesses, like Google, looking to understand exactly what the law is surrounding the Internet in China. The document is a rare glimpse of transparency in China's regulations. (emphasis added)

Actually, China issues documents like this all the time. They don't normally represent glimpses of transparency because they're in no way binding on the government. That is, you could follow all the substantive recommendations (if there even are any) and still be deemed to have "undermined national unity" or "infringed upon national honor" based on nothing but the PRC's desire to get you.
Thus the first sentence above is apt but the second is questionable. Might this be a glimpse of transparency? Only time will tell. If companies carefully following the guidelines available manage not to run afoul of the PRC government, then the answer will be yes. Otherwise, it's no glimpse of transparency at all, and even muddies the waters a bit more than was already the case.