China reins in microblogs to counter internet 'rumours'

China, well known for tightly controlling the internet in its borders, is on a campaign to counter what it sees as rumours on the internet. The focus of the campaign is China’s rapidly growing microblog services, Twitter-like applications that have taken the country by storm. In August, Chinese internet giant Sina proclaimed in a seven-storey advert in New York that while it took a little more than three years for Twitter to get 200m registered users, it took its own Weibo service half that time to reach the milestone. [caption id=“attachment_94310” align=“alignleft” width=“300” caption=“All internet companies in China have to agree to state controls to obtain an operating licence so Weibo faces the same rules as other services. Reuters”]  [/caption] The service grew quickly in part because Sina CEO Charles Chao and other company executives invited Chinese celebrities and well known media and business figures to join the service, according to Forbes Asia. Despite having more than 100 editors monitoring content on the service, the service became a place where ordinary Chinese vented their anger over a range of issues in their society. At times, Chinese authorities have allowed such protest, leading those familiar with the internet in China to believe the authorities see microblogs like Sina Weibo as a safety valve for frustrations over a range of issues. After a fatal high-speed train crash in July, news and images quickly spread on the microblogs such as Sina Weibo that countered official reports. Messages of outrage quickly poured out on the microblogs. One Weibo user wrote in response to state reports, “In the eyes of the authorities, regular people will always be gullible three-year-old children.” In another incident, the 15-year-old son of an army general and well-known singer not only rear-ended the car of a family, but then got out of the car and started shouting at the family. The teen, Li Tianyi, didn’t have a licence, and this was one of 36 driving violations that he had. According to CNN, Weibo user @ Gujingyema wrote, “For kids with family and social connections, the only way to deal with this kind of kid is to go by laws." After initially being seen to tolerate such comments, authorities are now reasserting their control. However, rather than simply blocking the service as Twitter has been since 2009, Chinese authorities are instead calling on police to correct facts and publish authorised information to quell rumours. Many have been watching to see if Weibo would launch a Twitter revolution in China, but as Gady Epstein (formerly with Forbes, now with the Economist)  said, Sina Chairman Chao, a former journalist, is “more cautious loyalist than agitating newshound”. He has made it clear that he will cooperate with authorities to rein in Weibo. At the recent China Digital Media Summit, he said, “Weibo is a microcosm of a big society and a society needs to be properly managed by regulations.” The site will institute a “credibility system”, according to CNN. Users who are found guilty of spreading rumours will have their accounts suspended from one week to one month. Investor blogs covering China cited Sina’s efforts to rein in rumours on Weibo as one of the reasons that the stock has dropped recently, but the drop was against broader weakness in Chinese internet stocks. Was Weibo’s meteoric growth due to the relative freedom that users’ felt? We’ll soon find out. All internet companies in China have to agree to state controls to obtain an operating licence so Weibo faces the same rules as other services. However, Weibo users will now find their complaints about government corruption or the bratty sons of high-powered officials countered with ‘authorised’ information, and if they continue to spread ‘rumours’, they might find their accounts suspended.