{"id":11528,"date":"2011-12-10T17:12:53","date_gmt":"2011-12-10T17:12:53","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-12-10T17:12:53","modified_gmt":"2011-12-10T17:12:53","slug":"Top-China-official-urges-more--forceful--web-controls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=11528","title":{"rendered":"Top China official urges more &#8220;forceful&#8221; web controls"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>A top Chinese government official has urged authorities to be &#8220;more forceful&#8221; in the way they manage the web, state media said, as Beijing tries to tighten online controls over fears of social unrest.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Wang Chen, head of the State Internet Information Office &#8212; a government body set up this year to supervise online content &#8212; also urged officials to use the web to &#8220;category_ide public opinion and promote positive social values&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><strong>With more than half a billion Chinese now online, authorities in Beijing are concerned about the power of the Internet to influence public opinion in a country that maintains tight controls on its traditional media outlets.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>And as the nation&#8217;s economy loses steam amid financial woes in Europe and the United States, <strong>China&#8217;s leaders are increasingly fearful of social unrest.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Large-scale strikes have hit China in recent weeks, as workers resentful about low salaries or layoffs face off with employers juggling high costs and slowing exports &#8212; news that quickly spreads round the country via the web.<\/p>\n<p>Leading Internet firms have already been pressured to tighten their grip on the web, with propaganda chief Li Changchun, fifth in the Communist Party hierarchy, meeting the heads of China&#8217;s main search engine Baidu in September.<\/p>\n<p>That same month, <strong>the head of Sina said the web giant &#8212; owner of China&#8217;s most popular Twitter-like microblogging service, or weibo, which has more than 200 million users<\/strong> &#8212; had set up &#8220;rumour-curbing teams&#8221;, apparently in response to government pressure.<\/p>\n<p>But still the Internet has posed a huge challenge to government attempts to block content it deems politically sensitive through a censorship system known as the &#8220;Great Firewall&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The number of weibo users has more than tripled since the end of 2010<\/strong>, according to government data, and the speed with which they have taken off has made it impossible for censors to keep up.<\/p>\n<p><em>Source AFP<\/em><br \/>\n<!--break--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A top Chinese government official has urged authorities to be &#8220;more forceful&#8221; 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