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China Set To Ban All Foreign Media From Publishing Online (independent.co.uk)

Posted by yaelk on from the who-would-have-thought dept.

schwit1 writes: A new directive issued by China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has said that companies which have foreign ownership (at least, in part) will be stopped from publishing words, pictures, maps, games, animation and sound of an 'informational and thoughtful nature' unless they have approval from the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television.

12 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. It is only a matter of time... by 110010001000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...before the US and EU follows suit. You will only be allowed on the Internet with approved devices and approved content. You don't think this is possible? Think of the children and the terrorists! Why do you hate children and don't you want to protect your Freedoms?

  2. 'informational and thoughtful nature'? by laie_techie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If it only covers things which are 'informational and thoughtful nature', most companies should be fine :D

    1. Re:'informational and thoughtful nature'? by MitchDev · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Hollywood is safe, as is the music industry

  3. Maybe, maybe not. by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I suspect that even in China, this will get watered down a bit given that there are very powerful people in China that have business models that will be highly inconvenienced by this.

    --
    If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
    1. Re:Maybe, maybe not. by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Many of these powerful Chinese business interests are part of the Chinese Leadership.

      The Chinese leadership is far from monolithic, and most threats to the current leaders come from within the ruling Chinese Communist Party. In multi-party democracies, there are different parties for different ideologies. But in China, there is only one party, so the CCP has everything from unreformed Maoists to libertarians, all under one tent. Instead of fighting to displace the ruling party, they are competing to control it. Most victims to the current "anti-corruption" campaign have been political rivals to Xi Jinping within the CCP. This latest move is mostly about silencing intra-party debate.

  4. I wonder why China feels so threatened by ZorinLynx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The country is prosperous, the state is firmly in power without any real challenge to it... Why do they feel the need to micromanage the Internet this way?

    1. Re:I wonder why China feels so threatened by tnk1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In the sense that it has private ownership of business, but the government coordinates the business, they're actually starting to look like a textbook fascist state. If you take away the very negative connotations of the word fascist and look at the economic and political setup of Fascist Italy and Spain and Germany, the parallels are striking.

      It is true that China is not burning minorities in ovens, but Italy or Spain did not do that either.

      From a purely neutral connotation, China is realizing the goal of the state coordinated fascist economy. Part of fascism is strong nationalism and the need to keep the People as a united front working with unions, the party, and business to move forward the State. Information control is an important part of keeping a united front as people become concerned with the ways that such a state does deals between the power brokers in a manner that excludes the People from any say in what happens.

    2. Re:I wonder why China feels so threatened by HornWumpus · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The Shanghai stock market is in the middle of a huge bubble. Powerful people in China are invested in that market. If normal people are allowed to know the average PE ratio on that market is still 50 (after a 50% drop) they will pull their money out, which will hurt the members of the central committee and their children.

      I don't know how they think these powerful people will get their money out, but the powers that be are determined to not lose their money. So no 'bad mouthing' the Shanghai exchange.

      This says nothing of the state of China's real estate market or banking sector.

      To me it seams like the Chinese were babes in the Capitalist woods and have truly screwed the pooch. They will lose 20 years progress when the bubble finally goes pop and will likely try to blame 'the west'.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  5. Makes sense, but how would it be enforced? by ErichTheRed · · Score: 4, Interesting

    China's going through a very interesting transition period, and they're doing a lot of things that the average citizen might not agree with. It kind of makes sense in their society to crack down further on dissent at this point. For example, it's coming to light now that those "ghost cities" that the West laughed off as pyramid-building are actually part of a mass-urbanization movement. China's going to take hundreds of millions of rural farmers and move them to cities to jump-start their consumer-driven phase of economic development. Pulling something like that off requires total control over the population and the messaging around it. It will be very interesting to see if this can be done successfully -- the Cultural Revolution or Great Leap Forward didn't produce the expected results, and the Soviet crash program of industrialization had major side effects.

    Now, how in the world do you enforce a ban like this? I guess the Chinese versions of internationally-owned news services are off limits now?

    1. Re:Makes sense, but how would it be enforced? by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve · · Score: 4, Insightful

      China's going through a very interesting transition period, and they're doing a lot of things that the average citizen might not agree with. It kind of makes sense in their society to crack down further on dissent at this point. For example, it's coming to light now that those "ghost cities" that the West laughed off as pyramid-building are actually part of a mass-urbanization movement. China's going to take hundreds of millions of rural farmers and move them to cities to jump-start their consumer-driven phase of economic development.

      I've been to China and I call bs on this. Think about what you just said. Although I suppose if you actually had thought about it, you might not have said it. Who exactly is going to farm once the farmers are gone? And believe me, while I have serious questions about Xi Jinping and think he may be a bit more delusional about how "great" communism is than any leader since Mao, I don't think he's irrational. He surely has to know that the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution were tremendous mistakes. I don't for a minute believe that China will simply move a bunch of farmers into a ghost city and give them communist style jobs that accomplish nothing and they get paid for simply showing up to work, all just to get them to spend more. Yes, surely Xi wants to clamp down on dissent now so that when the really painful changes come, people are already too afraid to complain, but your scenario seems so unlikely as to be a joke. Maybe you need a better source of news. Who said this to begin with? Glenn Beck?

  6. Re:Will Slashdot be affected? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Informative

    Will Slashdot be affected by this? Will it no longer be accessible in China?

    Slashdot is accessible in China, always has been, and will likely continue to be. This law only affects material hosted in China. The Chinese government doesn't care much about material published in English, unless it is overtly political.

    If Slashdot started supporting utf8, so that people could post in Chinese, the situation might change. But we all know that will never happen.

  7. It's Because of Prosperity They're Worried by Koreantoast · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You have it backwards. When China was poor but growing, the government only had to grow the economy, and people are forgiving on other things for the sake of making a better economic life. Now however, with China prosperous, people want to improve the quality of life - "public goods" as political scientists call it. They want cleaner governance and a reduction in graft, fair and impartial justice, regulations of things like food safety, social safety nets, government that better responds to local needs, social liberalization, etc. These are interlocking demands that require greater transparency and accountability of the government... things that while possible even under the Chinese one party system, would still require senior CCP members to give up their lucrative side businesses and constrain their activities which is very, very hard to do.