One of China’s top censors on Thursday reaffirmed the state’s commitment to monitoring the internet, showing no signs of compromising in the face of Google’s threat to quit the country.
Wang Chen, head of the State Council Information Office and deputy head of the Communist party’s propaganda department, said internet media “must live up to their responsibility of maintaining internet security”, including censoring content.
“We must do our best to intensify self-discipline among internet media to guarantee internet security,” he said.
China’s government demands self-censorship – which it calls “self-discipline” – from internet companies. Although Mr Wang did not mention Google by name, his remarks were being seen as Beijing’s first response to the US internet company’s threat to exit the country.
Google said on Tuesday that an attack by hackers out of China on its corporate systems and attempts by the Chinese government to tighten internet censorship over the past year had led it to reconsider its activities in the country, and it was prepared to pull out if it was not permitted to run its local service without further censoring.
In a lengthy statement published on a government website, Mr Wang said China was facing new challenges in regulating the internet as, among other factors, in the Web 2.0 era internet users were no longer just recipients but also creators of information.
In response, internet media were required to guard online news even more actively, he said. “Online media must treat the creation of a positive mainstream opinion environment as an important duty,” he said.
Mr Wang’s statement also served to explain some of the government’s censorship moves over the past year, one reason that led Google to conclude that the operating environment in China had become untenable.
Since late 2008, Beijing has been cracking down on online content in a campaign it says is aimed at erasing pornographic “and other harmful” content.
Over this period, thousands of websites and blogs, including many featuring criticism of the government rather than pornographic material, were closed and thousands arrested. Several Chinese social media sites were shut and foreign ones such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter blocked.
“The importance different countries attach to internet security is different,” Mr Wang said. “We must …, from the angle of national security, information security and cultural security, actively respond to the challenges in internet security and … find a path of internet development with Chinese characteristics.”
The information chief also addressed concerns over cyberattacks but depicted China as a victim rather than a perpetrator as alleged by Google.
“China is a victim of hackers and resolutely opposes hacking,” he said. “To maintain internet security, we need international cooperation and close co-ordination.”
