China defends internet control
2006-02-15 09:35
Beijing - China has defended its internet censorship policies, saying its rules follow international norms and claiming no one has been detained for writing online content, say reports on Wednesday.
Liu Zhengrong, deputy chief of the internet affairs bureau of the state council information office, argued that China was being no different from western nations, whose criticisms smacked of "double standards".
Zhengrong said: "Regulating the internet according to law is international practice.
"After studying internet legislation in the west, I've found we basically have identical legislative objectives and principles."
Foreign technology companies
Zhengrong's remarks were among the most comprehensive responses yet made by the Chinese government to growing criticism of the way it co-operated with foreign technology companies to regulate people's access to the internet in China.
He said: "It is unfair and smacks of double standards when (foreigners) criticise China for deleting illegal and harmful messages, while it is legal for US websites to do so."
Zhengrong said penalties imposed on websites carrying illegal and harmful information had been "lenient".
He said no website had been shut down in the country for providing a few pieces of such information.
Media commemorations
He said: "No one in China has been arrested simply because he or she said something on the internet. This appeared to contrast with several individual cases of Chinese citizens being incarcerated for their online activities.
In one recent example, journalist Shi Tao, who circulated a government order to suppress media commemorations of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, was jailed last year for 10 years after Yahoo handed over his e-mail records.
The state council information office didn't immediately reply to a request for clarification.
According to reports, Zhengrong also said Chinese people could access the web freely, apart from "a very few" foreign websites containing "pornography or terrorism", which were blocked.
The remarks appeared to be at odds with claims of overseas rights groups whose online research had showed there were significant differences in internet search results obtained inside and outside China's border.