The bosses of China’s top internet companies have agreed with authorities requests to tighten up content censorship as online media becomes more and more critical of Governemnt policies at the same time as local twitter like services make it harder for censors to react before the infomation is in the public domain.
“The chief executives of 39 internet, telecom and computer groups have reached a “consensus” that internet companies “must s:trengthen self-control, self-restraint and strict self-discipline”, according to the official news agency Xinhua.
“[They must also] determinedly contain the tendency of spreading online rumours, pornography, fraud and other illegal, harmful information on the internet,” it added.
The Financial Times says the report followed a three-day political schooling session attended by prominent entrepreneurs including Jack Ma, founder and chairman of the e-commerce group Alibaba, Robin Li, founder and chief executive of Baidu, China’s largest search engine, Pony Ma, founder and chief executive of Tencent, which operates the world’s largest instant messaging service, and Charles Chao, founder and chief executive of Sina, which runs the country’s leading microblog.
The news could trigger further disquiet among investors in China’s fast-growing IT industry as regulatory intervention shows signs of becoming more heavy-handed.
China has more than 500m internet users, according to government statistics, more than any other country and more than the population of the European Union.
While the ruling Communist party regards the internet as making a positive contribution to economic development, it runs a vast censorship machine to ensure that online information does not challenge its grip on power.
Forcing the privately owned companies that run websites to monitor, block and erase critical information has always been a cornerstone of Beijing’s internet censorship. But the authorities have recently stepped up their demands to internet companies – a development that drove Google partly to exit the Chinese market last year.
Censorship in general has been tightened in recent years as the security authorities have gained power in the wake of unrest in Tibet and Xinjiang regions, and as the party has become more cautious in advance of its next leadership succession next year.
Over the past eight months, the party has tried to fine-tune its censorship apparatus to establish firmer control of the Twitter-like social media on which government critics often publish faster than censors can react.
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