China looks to reduce net anonymity

THE CHINESE REGIME'S cuddly regulators are extending their reach even further with apparent plans to make citizens use their real names to access the Internet.

According to reports Wang Chen, director of China's State Council Information Office, thinks that the Chinese have too much freedom and that should be strictly curtailed when they are accessing their already censored view of the Internet from the Great Firewall of China.

Wang Chen, who has shot up to number one on our Christmas card list and is in the running for organising The INQUIRER's team weekend away to Holland, insists that punters should have to use their real names when going online, and also when buying a mobile phone. Presumably for reasons of transparency, and not for any interest in exerting unnecessary or oppressive control over citizens, you understand. Maybe he wants to send them all a card? We doubt it, though.

China is known for running the Internet a bit like a bully does a playground. It insists on its own rules, controls access to the rides, and kicks people off should they speak out against it.

It also picks large targets, and earlier this year, it and Google fell out for a while over web censorship after the former hacked the later.

Interestingly, Google was happy to collude with China's government to censor the Internet in China until China bit it on the backside, at which time it realised that the long arm of Chinese communism could reach as far as its offices and decide to close its doors to the country.

Now, according to a report from the New York based group, which has a name that is an oxymoron, Human Rights in China, in its magazine, Wang Chen said, "We will make the Internet real name system a reality as soon as possible, implement a nationwide cell phone real name system, and gradually apply the real name registration system to online interactive processes."

China already blocks common garden websites like Twitter and Facebook as it increases the strength of the suffocating hug it gives its one billion plus citizens, 400 million of which are now Internet users.

What a fun Internet experience they must be having. µ