CHINA'S GUARDIANS of the Internet have mandated that netcafe patrons in metropolitan Beijing must register with their real names starting later this year.

The Beijing Xicheng District Culture Administration Enforcement Team said that the eight urban districts of Beijing will adopt real name registration by June. The city's eight suburban districts and counties must follow suit by the end of 2008.

It doesn't take a crystal ball to foresee this being rolled out all throughout China.

All 53 of the Xicheng District's netcafes will have a new netcafe software system installed by the end of March. The system includes both netcafe operational and supervisory functions and facilitates customers' real names registration. The new netcafe system reportedly includes a database "for supervision decision-making."

Netcafe users will have to register once under their real names using a photo-id. They will each be assigned a unique netcafe user number that they can input to log in on subsequent visits.

Internet cafes have been weak points in the authoritarian Chinese government's pervasive Internet controls, but it would appear it has realised that and is now doing something about it, just in advance of the Olympic Games this summer.

For those interested in how the Chinese regime controls the population's access to and activities on the Internet, James Fallows has an article in the March issue of The Atlantic. µ

L'Inq
China Tech News