Google China, a subsidiary of Google, is ranked as the number 3 search engine in China, behind Baidu and Soso.com. (Photo : Getty Images/Jonathan Green)
The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology plans to introduce a new rule which will ban all foreign companies, including Chinese companies with foreign investment, from publishing anything online in China, effective from March.
The new regulation, which was announced last week, makes it mandatory for all foreign companies as well as Chinese-foreign partnerships to obtain prior approval before they publish any online content. The move is aimed at tightening the government's control of the digital realm, Associated Press reported.
The new rules, which will come into effect on March 10, state all companies even with minimum foreign ownership will be banned from publishing any text, pictures, games, maps, animation as well as any audio "of informational or thoughtful nature" in mainland China if they do not obtain prior approval from the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television.
Since long, the Chinese law made it mandatory for all Internet service providers to have an operating license, which is only granted to firms that enter into a joint venture with Chinese companies. According to experts, the new rules do not suggest a comprehensive revision of existing rules or practices.
Nevertheless, the new regulations do highlight the gradually growing preventive political environment in the Communist nation, where the leadership is trying to restrain public speech as well as thought, with a strong focus on the rapidly growing Internet industry in China.
In recent years, several foreign media companies like the New York Times, Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters, the Financial Times and Dow Jones have invested millions of dollars, which may total to hundreds of millions collectively, to develop China-based news organizations. These companies have been publishing news reports in Chinese targeting the Chinese audience, Quartz reported.
Unfortunately, the Chinese authorities have currently blocked several of these foreign media outlets. For several months now, top executives of these companies have been busy in secret negotiation with the Chinese authorities to get the blockade removed, but with little success.
Similarly, a number of gaming giants like Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox entered the Chinese market with mixed success. Now, social media giants, including Facebook, are endeavoring to reach the Chinese audience, keeping in view the large number online users in China, which is approximated to be around 700 million people.
In this context, the new guidelines emphasize that only companies fully-owned by Chinese can publish online content, while any foreign firm or Chinese company with least foreign investment will require prior approval for publishing online content. Incidentally, China's 2015 foreign investment handbook (Chinese language version) also banned foreign investment in "network publishing services." However, the English-language version of the handbook did not include this clause, misleading many foreign media outlets to invest in China.
Watch the clip on 'China bans media from quoting foreign reports, freelancers' below:
