CHINA / Regional |
China city moves to ban anonymous Web postings(AP)Updated: 2007-07-06 23:11 A southern Chinese city is considering a new rule banning anonymous Web postings after residents used the Internet to successfully halt construction of a massive chemical factory, a report said Friday. A Xiamen official told local reporters the proposed regulation bar anonymous postings online and requires Web sites to approve all postings, the Beijing Youth Daily reported. Xiamen would be the first city in China to require the use of real names online, Tian Feng, the vice director of the Xiamen Municipal Industry and Commerce Bureau, was quoted as saying on Tuesday. Last month, plans for a chemical plant in Xiamen were suspended after residents sent nearly 1 million text messages to friends and family, urging the government to abandon the US$1.4 billion paraxylene plant project because of its alleged health and environmental risks. One widely circulated message said the resulting devastation would be like "an atomic bomb in Xiamen." Mobile phone test messages and Internet postings were used to organize peaceful rallies that caught the attention of bloggers nationwide and helped push Beijing to pressure the city to suspend work on the factory. The project is undergoing a new environmental impact assessment ordered by the local government. "Following the opposition to the PX project, the government felt it should exert some control over Internet content," Tian was quoted as saying. But the report quoted Lin Congming, vice propaganda chief of the Xiamen Communist Party committee, as saying there is no relation between the chemical plant and the regulation. He also noted the regulation was only a draft. News of the proposed regulation quickly drew fire from the South Metropolis News _ one of China's most aggressive and outspoken sources for news. The Guangzhou paper quoted a legal professor as saying that Xiamen had no right to legislate such changes. "Only the National People's Congress has the right to legislate on this issue," He Bing of the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing was quoted as saying on the paper's Web site. |
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