Asian Insight

It’s going to get personal – China, micro blogs and privacy

Following a recent Communist Party meeting, China’s state-controlled newspaper, Beijing Daily, has announced that bloggers are now “required to show their real identity when they openly publish information or express their opinion.” This announcement is a direct result of the country’s increasingly active micro-blogging services, Sina and Tencent Weibo, which have become popular platforms to release information about events and happenings that have traditionally been controlled by the state press.

Both weibo sites already employ ‘content management teams’ and censor search results and trends due to the government’s censorship laws. However, there is currently a large portion of internet users across Asia preferring to use pseudonyms rather than their actual names. The reasons for this are unclear; whether it is due to fear of government or cultural reasons, the reaction of the country’s 400 million registered users will no doubt be controversial.

Over the past week, a video of a two-year-old girl being hit by a car twice and then ignored by 19 passing pedestrians in Guangdong has been plastered across the internet. Attracting a lot of attention on weibo, netizens have questioned China’s human nature, morality and the law.

请停止冷漠－－－－对小悦悦被辗、18路人只围观的绝望祷言。 中国，你病了吗？ #mylife

Despite the state’s announcement that a real-name policy is the only way to eradicate “those who are hiding in a dark corner while they are brewing rumours”, it is also likely to be an effort to discourage the release of events such as Yue Yue and the Zhejiang train crash.

With such a focus on social media in China and its increasing popularity, it will be interesting to see whether the platform will continue to be used or whether the restrictions, controls and traceability stump weibo’s growth. Some have already begun to highlight that a real-name registration system would reveal the paid pro-government bloggers, whilst others agree that blogging should not be anonymous. Will the move encourage other sites such as Facebook and Twitter to follow suit? Or will the move be seen as a step taken too far by a controlling Communist party?

- Charlotte