China Pledges To Step Up Internet Administration

angry tapir writes "China says it will step up administration of the Internet this year while continuing to build out the country's fiber-optic backbone and expand broadband access for consumers. Internet administration was mentioned in a keynote report on the work of the government to China's parliamentary session. It underlined the importance of culture and noted the need to 'strengthen the development of civic morality' and 'speed up the establishment of moral and behavioral norms that carry forward traditional Chinese virtues.' The pledge comes amid revelations that DDoS attacks against WordPress last week allegedly originated from China."

Comments

Authortarian Vomit

[Microlith]

It underlined the importance of culture and noted the need to 'strengthen the development of civic morality' and 'speed up the establishment of moral and behavioral norms that carry forward traditional Chinese virtues.'

Or in other words: suppress the flow of information that might threaten CCP rule, and push more magical-thinking hogwash created by the CCP down the people's throat. Just like every other "morality" or "virtue" rule the CCP has pushed in the past 30+ years.

Re:Authortarian Vomit

[corbettw]

Just like every other "morality" or "virtue" rule statists have pushed in the past 10,000+ years.

FTFY. Not that the Chinese government isn't the ultimate example of this kind of thinking in the 21st century, but this kind of hogwash and claptrap has been the bread and butter for statist pigs for millenia. Anytime someone tells you they have the answer to what is just and moral, and all it takes is you giving up your free will to conform to it to make the world a better place, well, they can just go fuck themselves.

Re:Authortarian Vomit

[ravenspear]

And the US is complicit, as long as China keeps paying.

The infrastructure that powers China's firewall (interconnections, deep packet inspection routers, software filters, etc) was built and configured by US corporations.

China is not the only place where economic considerations trump human rights for many people.

Chinese virtues as in blocking and tracking

[Joe The Dragon]

Chinese virtues as in blocking and tracking what people post?

A nation of administrators

[Troll-Under-D'Bridge]

China says it will step up administration of the Internet this year

If politically, the US is a nation of lawyers, then, as a single-party state, the PROC is effectively a nation of administrators. The US Congress might debate about network neutrality, but in China all issues pertaining to the Internet are viewed as problems of administration (management). China, Inc. makes more sense than the old Japan, Inc.

The PC World article references a downloadable PDF translation of Premier Wen's report to the National People's Congress from the Wall Street Journal. The part about administering the Internet comes from a section titled "Vigorously enhancing cultural development".

We will develop the press and publishing, radio and television, film, literature and art and archives. We will step up the use and administration of the Internet. We will deepen reform of the cultural management system and actively push forward the transformation of cultural institutions that are operating as commercial entities into real businesses.

The word "administration" occurs at least 15 times throughout the document, chiefly in the construct "social administration" and goes well with an image of Wen as some sort of company president or CEO delivering his annual stockholders' (party) report.

Geek note: The ~3 MB PDF appears to be a series of scanned pages overlaid upon the OCR'ed text version of the document. So you can actually cut and paste the text.

SSL is the key

[0olong]

Wait for the Chinese population to be as economically dependent on e-commerce as we are (which will happen very soon with widespread broadband availability). That will make it seem very unreasonable for the government to outlaw SSL without a major outcry from its populace. After that, the world should gradually move to make http over SSL the norm rather than the exception. Webmasters of the world, I'm looking at you. Let's see if the "great firewall" can handle that proficiently.

Re:SSL is the key

[0olong]

Uh, no. The Chinese government will just block everything but their own mandated and back-doored encryption alternative to SSL?

Re:SSL is the key

[vlueboy]

Even factoring in the People's OS, evidence shows that they have no OS chokehold over their supposedly oppressed citizens: By Microsoft's shamefaced anti-IE6 campaign figures, the Chinese are the kings of the IE6 holdout with 35% --a full 10% lead over the South Korean runner-ups. Other analysts placed China at 45% last November, when 15% was the world's average.

An older article article stresses CCW Research's statement that 33% of new PC buyers uninstall that Linux derivative right off the bat, but the PC shop tends to do just prior to the sale that for them as a loyalty perk. More unsettling is that IE6 isn't the only IE... IE7 and IE8 numbers has to push the balance even further away from the People's OS --new pirated PC's don't easily get XP even in the USA, especially in the mobile form-factors. That counts for fewer Windows downupgrades to XP that would otherwise beef up IE6's numbers in China.

Re:SSL is the key

[vlueboy]

Forgot to add this: back in 2007 MS had 90% OS share in China, which makes 'which Linux penetration do you have' just an exercise in futility.

How much market share might MS have lost to Red Linux / People's OS supposing the govt mandate did take effect after that techrepublic article was written 3 years ago?

Re:yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only 4 bytes -- you can remember them.

(This post brought to you by 2001 -- where 2^32 addresses are enough for anyone, nobody gives a damn about newfangled IPv6 thing, and the childrean are all above average.)

Re:Sad

[Mr. Mikey]

The Chinese government has a tough problem... how do you transition a nation of over a billion people, mostly subsistence farmers, into the 21st century?

Unfortunately, one of their chosen means is to attempt to maintain an authoritarian regime. Do the actions of the CCP qualify as "... direct [the internet] in a positive way that benefits everyone in society" ? No, they don't... they seek to maintain power by maintaining order, which they define as maintaining a stranglehold on the expression of ideas. This is done for the benefit of the CCP, not the benefit of the nation.

I can't help but note that you started out as if you were claiming that the Chinese government was acting in such a way as to benefit the Chinese people... but then you describe the government as an elitist oligarchy based on factors as irrelevant to good governance as one's Mandarin accent. You then go on to reference the US debt as if that was somehow relevant to your assertions concerning the Chinese government.

The reader is left wondering what you think you point might be, and what you think constitutes support for that point.