China and Bloggers

A recent Reuters article has described a Chinese government effort to require bloggers to register under their real names. Although China's economy is on its way to achieving some form of free-market system, freedom of expression seems to be lagging. The increased government involvement with Internet communications is perhaps a response to the threat posed by the Internet to the Communist regime.

"A real name system will be an unavoidable choice if China wants to standardize and develop its blog industry," the official Xinhua news agency quoted the Internet Society's secretary general, Huang Chengqing, as saying.

The increased surveillance and regulation of Chinese Internet activity seems to be an attempt at preventing grassroots opposition to the government. The fact that the Internet is warranting such measures is perhaps prophetic to the eventual democratisation of China and the current regime's concern of their eventual decline.

Read the Reuters article.