Originally published by The Standard, 08 July 2010

By Natalie Wong

Mainland authorities should regulate social networking sites in cyberspace as they could pose threats to national security, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said.

The first annual report about new media developments was released yesterday by the academy’s journalism and communication research center, two days after the first anniversary of the deadly Xinjiang riots.

One popular site, Facebook, has already been banned since last year because it did not comply with requests to censor content involving Uygur protests.

“With the most netizens and an increasing number of blogs, China is worried that personal information on social networking sites may be leaked easily for unlawful use,” the center said.

The fear driving the push to regulate social networking sites like MySpace and Friendster is that they could be used as “a channel for subversion of the state by Western regimes.”

The Xinjiang riots were the mainland’s deadliest in decades, leaving at least 197 people dead after clashes involving Han Chinese and Uygur Muslims.

The riots prompted the Communist Party to change its policy on ethnic groups over the past year. The center also criticized Google’s decision on March 22 to shut down its Chinese-language search engine and redirect mainland users to its Hong Kong site after refusing to bow to censors’ orders to filter search results.

The center described the decision of the internet giant as “a diplomatic strategy to promote American supremacy.”

The academy’s deputy president, Li Shenming, said: “The new media has played an important role in changing the way the party ruled the country and the public engaged in politics.”

He added that revenues for the communications and new media sector in China soared 26.6 percent over the past 16 years.

Law Yuk-kai, director of Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor, said messages posted on the internet in the mainland have led to mass incidents in recent years, and such a report would further threaten the mainland’s social activities.

He added: “It’s not possible for the mainland to extend its censorship laws to Hong Kong, but it would have an impact on Hong Kong people looking to get updated news about the social scene in the motherland.”

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