Home / Channel / Chinese government reinforces stranglehold on internet

Chinese government reinforces stranglehold on internet

While much of the Western world has spent the last year reeling at the fact that intelligence agencies abroad and at home have been tracking their every move online and recording every interaction they have, the people of China have been well aware of their government's overwatch of the internet and its plans to censor anything it wasn't a fan of for a long time. Now though the government has cemented that principle, with China's highest court ruling that posting information it doesn't like online will be illegal, as well as the paid for removal of content that could be ‘incriminating.'

This ruling came from the Supreme People's Court that essentially allows the government and its agencies to gather information from any ISP about any of their customers, with the idea being that those organisations can then track down anyone that says something it doesn't like online. According to the SCMP, the government said that it was hoping to route out “rumour mongers,” further discrediting its online critics.

hksnowden
Edward Snowden was recently held up as a hero in the Hong Kong protests

The illegality of certain online comments will also apply to celebrities in the country, as the Supreme People's Court stated that those with larger online followings would be considered as having a greater legal responsibility not to spread ‘rumours' about the ruling party.

China has always been restrictive with its internet, but last year it arrested hundreds of people for making negative comments about the government and “inciting trouble,” in blog comment sections.

Deleting or hiding of information online is also now considered illegal. According to the guidelines, due to the crackdown by Chinese officials, a grey market had emerged of people using their skins at computing to hide information for others.

KitGuru Says: The Supreme People's Court sounds about as accurate a name as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. 

Image Source: See-Ming Lee

Become a Patron!

Check Also

SILENT PC BUILD – Lian Li O11 Vision UNIFAN TL Wireless Fans Build

Relax this Christmas with a special 'talk free' PC build - themed to match a snowy festive time. We hope you enjoy this one!

2 comments

  1. The issue is, the Chinese government is effectively putting it’s head in the sand.
    (below is my opinion, short of what comes on the news, i do not know the full story of what happens in China FYI)
    I get the impression there is a lot of discontent amoung the younger generations because they’re effectively being screwed over by the ruling elite.
    The Chinese government having an increasingly hard time with it’s game of Whack-a-Mole against discontent.
    Genuinly, i believe there will be a another tiananmen square soon

  2. I think so too. Chinese people are more and more driving to the modern age in terms of rights and wealth so there will be a time where the new generation (which will be really intelligent and self-aware of the problems) will certainly rebel against the governments by protesting.

We've noticed that you are using an ad blocker.

Thank you for visiting KitGuru. Our news and reviews teams work hard to bring you the latest stories and finest, in-depth analysis.

We want to be as informative as possible – and to help our readers make the best buying decisions. The mechanism we use to run our business and pay some of the best journalists in the world, is advertising.

If you want to support KitGuru, then please add www.kitguru.net to your ad blocking whitelist or disable your adblocking software. It really makes a difference and allows us to continue creating the kind of content you really want to read.

It is important you know that we don’t run pop ups, pop unders, audio ads, code tracking ads or anything else that would interfere with the KitGuru experience. Adblockers can actually block some of our free content, such as galleries!