In China, the police never call the Internet “the Internet”. They call it, in “superior socialism-speak”, the “public information networks” (公共信息网络). Yes, there is a Chinese word for Internet (hu lian wang, 互联网) but it’s still “new”, even after the National People’s Congress (the Chinese version of Congress) made a long, officialspeak-filled “decision” just about ten years ago, something that became the “granddaddy Chinese Internet law”.
This being the case, then, the Web is something new. And that can mean that, as you’re just wading in the Web waters, you’re likely to botch up, regulatory-wise or other. The Chinese government, then, must be pretty busy managing — or mis-managing, rather — the Chinese Interwebs.
In a recent article published on Forbes, Paul Denlinger (@pdenlinger), one of the most insightful tweeps in the Chinese Twittersphere, correctly argues that while the West sees China as being efficient (in some aspects), that kind of efficiency (which to your Swiss blogger any Swiss should be able to outdo) isn’t being shown on the Internet. In control of the Chinese Interwebs are, at the very least:
- the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology
- the Ministry of Culture
- the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television
- the Ministry of Finance
- the Ministry of Public Security
- the Ministry of State Security (that’s why the dissidents get jailed: “breaches of State security”)
and that’s just a few in the lot. As Denlinger says:
Here lies the problem: Every Internet owner and operator has to deal with multiple Chinese government ministries and make sure that he is in conformity with ALL regulations. Violations with just one ministry can kill an operation, as happened when Netease launched World of Warcraft in September last year.
Denlinger further argues:
From a business perspective, this unclear mishmash of regulatory bodies creates delays and inefficiency and, at worst, opportunities for corruption.
These political and bureaucratic turf wars for Internet companies are much worse than in many other industries because it’s a new industry. So why didn’t the government just set up a new Ministry for Internet and Mobile Media? This would have provided the benefit of the operators having to deal with only one ministry for most affairs. The closer the government can come to making ministries and relevant offices a one-stop shop for an operator to go to resolve issues, the better.
Denlinger’s article, despite being titled as some kind of “criticism”, is not the usual same-old-same-old “Westerner anti-Chinese-government” article. Instead of calling for ideological conflict, Denlinger, for a change, argues that the trouble with China in this day and age is that there’s the lack of anyone who’s a clear leader and who will champion the Internet.
In the same veins, news articles in the past months have made sketchy references to a possible PRC Internet Management Law. It’s not sure if a new “Internet ministry” will be responsible, or if the law will, in the same “same-old-same-old” fashion, assign a smorgasbord of mandarins responsible for Chinese cyberspace.