October 29, 2003

BEIJING, Oct 30 (AFP) - China plans to set up a national surveillance system for Internet cafes and let a small number of companies run most of them, in a move that was immediately criticized as yet another attempt at online control.

Measures to "standardize" the management of Internet cafes are already in place in two provinces in southwest China, and the whole nation will be covered by 2005, the Beijing Morning Post reported.

"We are actively pushing an 'Internet cafe technology management system,' requiring the whole nation to adopt the same standard and each province the same software," said Liu Yuzhu, a culture ministry official.

The paper did not give details about how the software would enhance control over what people watch in the country's 110,000 Internet cafes.

However, media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said it would make it possible to collect personal data on Internet users, store a record of the webpages they visit, and alert authorities when they view unlawful content.

The culture ministry also plans to introduce the chainstore concept into the business, letting up to 100 companies run the vast majority of Internet cafes, the paper said.

Reporters Without Borders said the new measures could serve as a model for other repressive governments.

"By putting the Internet cafes under the management of a few, partly state-owned companies and by standardizing the surveillance equipment installed by the chain stores, the Chinese authorities are making it easier to censor the Internet," said Robert Menard, the group's secretary general.

There were roughly 68 million Internet users in China at the end of June, putting the world's most populous nation second behind the United States in terms of people online.

The Internet explosion is both a blessing and a curse for the Chinese government, which wants people to be more tech-savvy without absorbing too many foreign ideas or spreading subversive messages online.

Internet users are frequently jailed for posting articles critical of the government.

China has formulated a policy of developing the Internet while concurrently limiting the content of Chinese sites and restricting access to some foreign cites.

The government passed a law last year that places the burden of responsibility for content on Internet access providers.

http://www.ptd.net/webnews/wed/ch/Qchina-internet.RRlM_DOU.html