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BEIJING
— China ranks last in the world for openness among countries studied
in a new report on Internet freedom by a prominent American
pro-democracy group.
The
report, “Freedom on the Net 2015,†the latest such annual study by
the group, Freedom House, lists the many ways in which China is
restricting free access to the Internet, from strengthening its Great
Firewall system of website censorship to criminalizing some kinds of
Internet speech. China had the worst score of 65 nations — behind
Iran, Cuba and Myanmar. (North Korea was not included in the report.)
“The
aim of establishing control was particularly evident in the
government’s attitude toward foreign Internet companies, its
undermining of digital security protocols, and its ongoing erosion of
user rights, including through extralegal detentions and the imposition
of prison sentences for online speech,†says the report released this
week. “China was the world’s worst abuser of Internet freedom in the
2015 Freedom on the Net survey.â€
Xinhua,
the state-run news agency, reported on Wednesday that, through a new
criminal law, Chinese officials will be able to punish a person creating
and spreading “false information†online with a prison sentence of
up to seven years. The law is the latest in an array of legal
regulations that Chinese officials have used in recent years to silence
political dissent and quash the spread of information and rumors.
The
new law, which will take effect on Sunday, significantly increases the
punishment for those judged to be spreading rumors or politically
delicate information. The earlier punishment under a similar measure was
an administrative one and not a criminal one, Xinhua reported. Under
the earlier administrative law, a person convicted on the charge of
spreading rumors online could be placed under detention for five to 10
days and fined as much as 500 renminbi, or about $80.
The
new law says that people who “fabricate false information about
hazards, diseases, disasters or crimes and spread it on information
networks or other media, or deliberately spread it on information
networks or other media while knowing it is false information, seriously
disrupting social orders, will be sentenced to a prison term up to
three years, placed under detention or face enforcement measures.â€
“In
cases where serious consequences are caused, one will be sentenced to a
prison term ranging from three to seven years,†the new law says.
Since
2013, Chinese officials have often used another criminal charge,
“picking quarrels and provoking trouble,†to jail a wide range of
people for online speech, from artists to essayists to liberal lawyers.
The best-known case is that of Pu Zhiqiang, a civil rights defense
lawyer who was detained last year. He was charged by prosecutors in May
with inciting ethnic hatred and picking quarrels and provoking trouble,
for which he faces up to eight years in prison. His lawyers said the
prosecutors had built their case on 28 microblog posts he had written,
some of which criticized China’s policies toward the Uighurs, an
ethnic minority.
Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
The
“picking quarrels†charge has been used as a harsh tool in a
widespread official “antirumor campaign†whose aim is to silence
certain kinds of Internet speech.
This
summer, China released a draft law on cybersecurity that, if passed,
would further formalize broad powers that the government already wields
in clamping down on Internet activity. That includes shutting down the
wider Internet in large regions, as the government did in 2009 during
rioting involving ethnic Uighurs in the capital of the Xinjiang region.
For a year, the government allowed access to only a few official
websites across all of Xinjiang, which is one-sixth of the territory of
China.
“The
cybersecurity law is still under discussion now,†said Zhan Jiang, a
media studies professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University. “It
indicates that more regulations will be placed on the Internet out of
security concerns.â€
China
now emphasizes the importance of “cyberspace sovereignty.†The
official in charge of the Cyberspace Administration of China, Lu Wei,
has stressed that idea in recent meetings with executives of foreign
Internet and media companies that want greater access to the Chinese
market. Some of the most popular American-run websites are blocked in
China, including Google, Facebook and Twitter. (The New York Times has
been blocked since 2012.)
China
has been steadily falling in the annual Freedom House report in recent
years. Last year, it ranked third from the bottom among 65 nations,
ahead of Iran and Syria. This year’s report says that “over the past
year, the renewed emphasis on information control led to acts of
unconcealed aggression against Internet freedom.â€
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