China Bans Military Personnel From Blogging

eldavojohn writes "China has banned all 2.3M members of its military from blogging — even personal, non-military blogs. From the announcement of the new regulation: 'Soldiers cannot open blogs on the Internet no matter (whether) he or she does it in the capacity of a soldier or not. The Internet is complicated and we should guard against online traps.' While the official word seems to not be translated to English yet, the same apparently goes for websites or homepages owned by soldiers; there is no indication as to whether or not this applies to sites like Facebook or Renren (which the USMC bans). Similarly, as of 2007, the US requires active duty soldiers to clear any posting with a superior officer, and Israel had to cancel an operation due to a Facebook status update. A military blog aggregating site claims only a few Chinese military blogs indexed, but it looks like as of June 15 that list may have shortened."

Comments

A Natural OPSEC Move

[cmholm]

This makes perfect sense, OPSEC-wise, and within the context of Chinese culture, I suspect is no big deal.

From what I've seen, this wouldn't be a completely insane idea to apply to members of the US armed forces. But, given the role of reservists and the existing penetration of the social web into the demographic of those currently serving, this would be a bear to enforce, and result in a storm of protest, on the assumption it's goal was to cut off alternative sources of information on the situation in Afghanistan.

Re:How Does this Affect My Rights Online??!

[microbee]

It violates your right to follow any blog opened by a Chinese soldier! We all know Chinese soldiers form the best army of bloggers, now they are all gone!

USMC

[allcaps]

To clear any ambiguity, the USMC does not forbid Marines from using Facebook or any other social Networking site. They only disallow access on their own INTRAnet.

"The ban ... only applies to Marine Corps networks and computers, allowing Marines to access the sites on their own computers or at Internet cafes." -tinyurl.com/nnymlj [cnn.com]

Re:USMC

[DNS-and-BIND]

Sssh! Don't say that! It's all about moral equivalence! Every time somebody says something about China or other repressive governments, the very next breath will contain some example, no matter how contrived, about how we are exactly the same if not worse. Refer to 1960s-era arguments handwaving away the USSR's political oppression by referring to Senator McCarthy.

Re:USMC

[KingSkippus]

So is there no room in your universe for both to be wrong? And given the "they made that up" nature of the GP, are you insinuating that people today are making up stuff McCarthy did? 'Cause for the record, in reality, that was one evil dude.

Not Surprising

[WindBourne]

China is in a cold war with the west. The last thing they want is information leaking out. As it is, they make heavy us of spying in the west to come up with all sorts of offensive weapons that they can use. Sadly, the west is trying to be friends with China, but China is about to surprise everybody. The reality is, when you are the leader of the worlds largest nation (population wise), AND have a population that is about to be very heavily skewed towards males, what do you want next? The world. If nothing else, look at their military systems. Heck, look at their recent promise to allow the Yuan to 'float'. It floated for a day and then was restored. Then floated just a little bit downwards. Why? Because the TRUE leaders of CHina said NO.

Re:Not Surprising

[thoughtsatthemoment]

There is no cold war any more unless you say there is one. China is just trying to maintain it's political system while engaging the rest of the world economically. This is similar to Saudi Arabia. Some Americans seem to be uncomfortable or hostile toward China because they think China has the potential to challenge the US militarily. But that's a short sighted view.

Most people in China really do not understand the west at all from a philosophical perspective. I am not saying the west is good or bad, but there are indeed significant differences and they are quite obvious if people have the chance to see both. What's why the economical interactions between China and the west will eventually have a great impact on China and the rest of the world.

Re:Not Surprising

[WindBourne]

You missed the point. China is not economically open. They fix their money to ours; they have loads of trade barriers; They dump on western markets; they have massive theft in IP, weapons, etc. As to gov., China has a group of ppl that control and seek greater control not less. They are secretive about their military and their intentions. They are a totalitarian. Saudi Arabia is a kingdom. However, they are up front about what they want and represent. There is NOTHING similar between the two.