If you’re in China and happen to post comments on a blog, be prepared to disclose your identity, which must be your real name as it appears in your whatever identity card you’re carrying.
This has become mandatory for some 100,000 websites registered in Xiamen, a Chinese getaway for the wealthy. The reason? Recently, Xiamen’s net users, confabulating through Internet campaigns on reportedly ill effects of a proposed chemical factory in the city, have been able to stall the factory from coming up.
As TimesOnline says, China has an infamous history of putting behind bars all those who dare speak out in favor of what they feel must be protested. Dozens of outspoken journalists and web commentators are serving lengthy prison terms after being jailed on charges such as subversion or leaking state secrets.
The Xiamen protesters, fed by sustained campaign whose actual source is still a mystery, marched on the streets of which there have been live reports on the web.
No wonder the oppressive Chinese authorities decided it’s time to crack the whip. And so comes the new law called Management and Disposition of Harmful and Unhealthy Information on the Internet.
Though Xiamen is the first city in China to claim the credit of having though the new law, perhaps it will soon find favor in every other Chinese city as well.
Looking at Xiamen development, it won’t be wrong to feel whoever said information is the king is bound to bite his hand for making a costly mistake.
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