China Moves to Control Online Video

By Radio Free Asia
04 January 2008

China's government has issued a stringent new set of rules which will ban all but state-owned corporations from making and uploading video to the Internet.

The new regulations were issued jointly Dec. 31 by the Ministry of Information Industry and the Bureau of Film and Television under China's cabinet, the State Council.

"Companies or individuals who do not have an operating license issued by the relevant department, or who have not submitted an application for such a license, must cease to offer online video services," said the regulations, which come into effect Jan. 31.

The move will make it difficult for Chinese netizens to post video to their blogs or to Web sites, or to Chinese video-sharing sites similar to YouTube, including citizen journalism of the kind which has proliferated amid growing civil unrest across the country.

Industry experts estimate that there are currently around 160 sites offering such services in China, and that the majority of them are private enterprises financed by venture capital. Quite a few of them operate without any kind of license from the government.

"There is only one point to these rules, and that is to step up controls over any possible political dissent that might emerge in China," Shaanxi-based cyberdissident Deng Yongliang told RFA's Mandarin service.

"Now that the standard of living is rising for many people, they are beginning to demand more intellectually as well as materially, and such ideological freedom would be a challenge to the current political system," Deng said.

"We are also about to hold the Olympic Games, and so the authorities will continue to step up controls on freedom of expression."

It is currently possible to see video of incidents of social unrest in China, circulating alongside hard and soft porn, and home movies people make to amuse each other.

In one video uploaded to the popular sharing site 56.com, an ordinary citizen visited Beijing's "Petitioner Village", a now-demolished shantytown once housing hundreds of destitute people who lost everything, and who now spend their lives trying to win redress for grievances against the government.

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