Qingdao Joins Guangzhou, Beijing in Requiring Private Web Sites to Register with Police

August 1, 2005

Qingdao Web site operators must register with their public security office by the end of September 2005 or have their Internet access service shut down, according to a July 7 report in the Qingdao Morning News.

Qingdao Web site operators must register with their public security office by the end of September 2005 or have their Internet access service shut down, according to a July 7 report in the Qingdao Morning News. The report quoted a "responsible person" in the Qingdao public security office's Internet monitoring division as saying that "starting now, Internet monitoring detachments will continue to monitor and control Web sites throughout the city, and as soon as they discover any malicious Web sites that disseminate harmful information or defraud consumers, they will promptly cut off their Internet access and impose sanctions in accordance with the law." The report said that of Qingdao's 4,000 Web sites, 1,200 had not registered with the public security bureau.

Qingdao joins Beijing and Guangzhou in forcing Web sites to register with public security authorities. Officials have cited provisions of the Measures for the Administration of Security Protection of Computer Information Networks with International Interconnections as authorizing this registration requirement, but have not explained why the government has chosen to begin enforcing those provisions now, when the Measures were enacted in 1997. It coincides, however, with the Ministry of Information Industry's (MII) recently concluded crackdown on private Web sites that resulted in the closure of thousands of Web sites whose operators failed to register. Like the public security crackdown, the MII's campaign was based on regulations that were enacted several years ago (the Measures for the Administration of Internet Information Services, which became effective in 2000), but that are only now being enforced (pursuant to the Registration Administration Measures for Non-Commercial Internet Information Services). Unlike the public security crackdown, which appears to be limited to a few large cities, the MII campaign was national in scope.