China’s internet regulator praises whistle-blowers for keeping cyberspace free of ‘harmful’ content
- Work of public army of censors has become a crucial part of the country’s online governance, Cyberspace Administration of China says
- Watchdog received 165 million reports of inappropriate material in 2018, twice the number from a year earlier, it says
People blowing the whistle on one another for uploading “harmful” content has become a crucial part of the country’s online governance, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said in a statement released on Friday.
Last year alone, 165 million reports of such material were filed across the country, a figure more than double the previous year’s and four times the number in 2016, the agency said.
While the total looks set to continue growing, the number of reports filed in the first six months of this year was up only 9 per cent from the same period of 2018.
China’s ruling Communist Party maintains a vice-like grip on the nation’s internet via a sophisticated censorship system known as the Great Firewall that blocks large numbers of foreign websites and slows down traffic for others.
According to CAC director Zhuang Rongwen all of China’s internet users – it has about 854 million, or more than two-and-a-half times the population of the United States – are encouraged to join the “people’s war” to rehabilitate the “cyber ecology”.
