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China Set To Ban All Foreign Media From Publishing Online (independent.co.uk) 110

Posted by yaelk 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.
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China Set To Ban All Foreign Media From Publishing Online More

China Set To Ban All Foreign Media From Publishing Online

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  • Didn't check that one did they ?

  • The End of Slashdot? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Will this mean the end of Slashdot? We were just getting used to the progressive changes of the new owners. But without China's approval, whatever can we do?

    • will be stopped from publishing words, pictures, maps, games, animation and sound of an 'informational and thoughtful nature'

      We're quite safe.

    • We could ask that kenny west guy to host slashdot at his water park "the pirate bay" he seems to have franchises all over the world. Just don't forget to bring a towel!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by k6mfw ( 1182893 )
      If slashdot gets blocked, will productivity in the workplace increase?

  • It is only a matter of time... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Friday February 19, 2016 @11:38AM (#51541985) Homepage Journal
    ...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?

    • How shall the new environment be programmed? It all happened so slowly that most men failed to realize that anything had happened at all.

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by 110010001000 ( 697113 )
        It started with the transition of computers from PC's to walled gardens and network access through monopolies who don't honor network neutrality. Eventually you will need an "approved device" to talk to the Internet and you will need to access your data through external "cloud" services. You already see this with the success of iOS devices and the various "app stores".

    • ...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?

      Inbred. Self-referential and paranoid. The greatest threat to Slashdot is internal. There is nothing needed more here than new blood.

  • 'informational and thoughtful nature'? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by laie_techie ( 883464 ) on Friday February 19, 2016 @11:41AM (#51542005)

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

  • I think it's always been this way (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Censorship has always been policy #1. If you don't give the government the ability to take things down they deem inappropriate on their own, you don't get to do business in China. For all those who had hope that things would get better under Xi...it's actually gotten worse. It's a sign that the CCP is worried about losing iron-grip control of the people as they begin to become more enlightened through education, trips abroad, positive interactions with foreigners (it used to be part of indoctrination in

    • Xi Jinping is a Maoist hardliner. He doesn't want to return to a rural China per se, but he wants that feeling of control again that he had in the 80's. No more nasty books about his affairs, or corruption, or illegal evictions, or human rights... but he can do without the horrible economy that went with it, because the Chinese will not quietly accept a slide back into that pile of crap.

      The reason they tolerate the party is because it has given most Chinese a very real improvement in living standards and co

      • More likely Xi is just responding to the situation. China's economy is struggling, and that makes it a dangerous time for the party, which means the party will try to exert more control over the media to prevent opposition from growing to seize the opportunity.

  • Maybe, maybe not. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Frosty Piss ( 770223 ) * on Friday February 19, 2016 @11:44AM (#51542025)

    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.

    • The control of the State over information is more important than everything else: including profit. State Power is more important than profit. If you can't control the State you have no Power. If you have Power you have everything (power is the true wealth).

      • t. State Power is more important than profit

        One can't exist without the other. The difference between them and the west is that this will occur by definition in China: people will die before one succeeds at the others expense. In the west, the profits own the state, so they are both tied together.

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

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by 110010001000 ( 697113 )
          Yes. You see this too in the US. Look at the Presidential field: many business leaders vying to get their way in. And even if they aren't trying to get elected, people like Buffett have access to the decisions made at the highest level. He is "consulted" every time there is a bailout issue.

          • There is a basic difference between rich people trying to get power and powerful people making themselves and their children rich.

            Who do you suggest we elect? The worlds losers? If they can't manage their lives, their is no reason to let them try to manage anything else.

            Money just naturally leads to power, but those who get power by other means, in order to later make themselves rich are the most useless scum on earth.

            • I wouldn't suggest you elect people like the wife of a former President who is grooming her child to also become President in the future. I wouldn't suggest you elect people like another Bush or Kennedy. We don't need powerful families who keep getting elected based on their name and biological relationships. I also wouldn't elect people based on their "business success". People like Carly are terrible: they may fortunes by ruining entire companies and peoples lives. She isn't a winner, she is a loser.

              • I wouldn't suggest you elect people like the wife of a former President

                ok, I can agree with that.

                I wouldn't suggest you elect people like another Bush or Kennedy.

                You're full of good ideas today, keep it up.

                People like Carly are terrible:

                Yeah, I guess she shouldn't be elected either.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by lgw ( 121541 )

              oney just naturally leads to power, but those who get power by other means, in order to later make themselves rich are the most useless scum on earth.

              Let me put this a different way, with a bit of historical insight.

              Four roads to power have been tried at the scale of nations in history:
              1) Money
              2) Military success
              3) Ability to directly control the "leaders" through threats
              4) Success within a permanent hierarchy, religious or otherwise

              (Never confuse "power" with "title" - the titular leaders of a country may or may not be the ones in power.) Of these, it sucks the least for money to be the road to power. There must be something better, but it hasn't been

        • Re:Maybe, maybe not. (Score:4, Insightful)

          by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Friday February 19, 2016 @01:24PM (#51542907)

          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.

  • To be clear, they're the guys with the tanks.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • If you want it printed online that is...
  • Mainland China: The new 'AOL'. 'World Wide Web'? What is this thing of which you speak? There is only ChinaWeb! Why would you need anything else? Are you suffering from a mental illness? Perhaps we should 'hospitalize' you and 'treat you' for your 'mental illness' until you're free of these delusions about a 'World Wide Web'. Perhaps we'd better 'quarrantine' your family, too, just in case it's something contagious..

  • China's getting annoyed again with those that refer to Taiwan separately from the PRC on their maps, etc.

    Good luck with that.

  • I wonder why China feels so threatened (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ZorinLynx ( 31751 ) on Friday February 19, 2016 @12:10PM (#51542191) Homepage

    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?

    • Re:I wonder why China feels so threatened (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tnk1 ( 899206 ) on Friday February 19, 2016 @12:29PM (#51542341)

      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.

    • Re:I wonder why China feels so threatened (Score:5, Interesting)

      by HornWumpus ( 783565 ) on Friday February 19, 2016 @12:30PM (#51542359)

      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'.

    • It's Because of Prosperity They're Worried (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Koreantoast ( 527520 ) on Friday February 19, 2016 @01:22PM (#51542893)
      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.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      They came to power via violent revolution. They fear the same will happen to them. All governments have this to some degree, but for China it is more fresh. If you consider the Cultural Revolution as the most recent revolution, then it's in living memory. Compare this with the USA, where the last real threat to the Republic was the Civil War. Imagine if the Civil War had been fought in living memory. In fact, you don't have to. The North got tired of reconstructing the South and gave up less than a g

    • They're prosperous, but running off the cliff. They need to micromanage information now (pre collapse) before people are forced to look up from their distractions later (post-collapse). I would compare it to bracing for impact.

  • Makes sense, but how would it be enforced? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ErichTheRed ( 39327 ) on Friday February 19, 2016 @12:15PM (#51542225)

    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?

    • They built the ghost cities to make their growth numbers. That's the only reason.

      They might now be telling stories to justify it. But they are just stories. Many of the ghost cities are in locations that make no sense at all.

    • Re:Makes sense, but how would it be enforced? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve ( 949321 ) on Friday February 19, 2016 @12:45PM (#51542499)

      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?

    • 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?

      If you violate the directive, then your website will get blocked and no one will be able to access it without using a VPN. Easy. Other penalties may apply.

    • 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?

      Wow. It's like Agenda 21: China. Glen Beck should write another book.

  • I appreciate their directness. Usually such rulers call it "subversive" material. This time they call it "thoughtful" material.

    I don't know whether that's a step up on the maturity ladder, or a new brand of bureaucratic silliness.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tnk1 ( 899206 )

      It is probably a mistranslation of the Chinese, part of an idiom, or perhaps a correct translation that suffers from a lack of context in English.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        Could be. It's probably intended to say forms of speculative, philosophical, political, and/or editorial commentary. In other words, "Describe your products, sanctioned facts/news, and then shut up."

  • A ruling like this could act as a major barrier against foreign companies of all sorts. For example, are service manuals or software updates covered? If so, this could act as a barrier against almost any imported manufactured product.
  • China is gearing up for an attack by the US. The precursor will be internal dissent. China isn't thick - they know what the Arab Spring really was, and who was behind it.
    All nations should be on alert for a new US sponsored Color Revolution. And China and Russia are certainly front footed.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_revolution [wikipedia.org]
    • Sponsored, but not illegitimate. I think a revolution would happen in China without our involvement. In any case, it makes sense for them to crack down now, before the economic collapse triggers something like that later. When people aren't happy, they start asking why.

  • Here's my publication of an informational and thoughtful nature on this ban:

    "F**k off you ridiculous tin-pot dictator twerps."

    How does that look via google translate?

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