OpenNet Initiative: Bulletin 011

Analysis of China's Non-Commercial Web Site Registration Regulation

February 22, 2006
Last Updated: February 22, 2006
http://www.opennetinitiative.net/bulletins/011/

China has recently moved to require all non-commercial Web sites to register with its Ministry of Information Industry (MII)(1). The MII began closing non-registered Web sites at the end of December 2005. The OpenNet Initiative (ONI) analyzed the legal regulations underlying this move and examined compliance with, and resistance to, the new mandate. We believe that this new legal prescription will press Web site and blog owners to be even more cautious and conscious about what they (and perhaps third party visitors) post on their Web sites, while allowing the Chinese government to identify more easily the authors of sensitive or objectionable content. Thus, this new method is best understood not as a technical control over the Web, but rather as a "soft" control that dissuades Chinese citizens from posting, or hosting, controversial materials.

Contents:
- Background
- Who Must Register?
- What Does Registration Require?
- Who Is Responsible For Enforcement?
- What Are Penalties For Non-compliance?
- How Has The Requirement Affected Web Site Owners?
- Analysis

Background

The Non-Commercial Web Site Registration Regulation took effect on March 20, 2005. It provides that all non-commercial Web sites must register with the MII or face a significant financial penalty.(2) Previously, only commercial Web sites were required to register with MII. Under the new regulation, Web site owners must provide certain personal information to MII, and this data becomes available to the public on the Web. There have been mixed reactions toward the new regulation. Some Chinese users fear that it will substantially curb information exchange through media such as Web logs (blogs) and others view the new requirement as a minor hurdle.

Who Must Register?
Under the new regulation, all non-commercial websites with independent domain names and mainland Chinese IP addresses must register with MII.(3) The new regulation covers all non-commercial Web sites in China, including those of government entities, private enterprises, institutions, and individuals.(4) According to Article 2 of the regulation, "anyone providing non-commercial Internet informational service in the People's Republic of China (PRC) shall register with MII."(5) The regulation does not clearly define "non-commercial Internet Informational service provider," but the designation apparently refers to Web sites on which information is provided or exchanged but no business transactions or e-commerce are conducted; thus, in addition to personal Web pages and blogs, company promotional Web sites would be considered "non-commercial" so long as business transactions are not conducted directly through the site. Article 5 defines "providing non-commercial Internet information services in the PRC" as "any organization or individual in the PRC that provides Internet informational service by utilizing a website accessible through an Internet domain name or utilizing a website that is only accessible through an Internet IP address."(6) Thus, the regulation focuses on entities in China that set up informational sites accessible to the public.

From the text of the regulation, it seems that a Web site owner in China updating a foreign-based site, such as a blog hosted abroad, would fall under the regulation and would have to register. If so, bloggers in China who host their blogs on servers outside China to evade the regulation would not likely succeed in this attempt. However, an MII official clarified that "currently websites with IP addresses not in mainland China IP address block are not required to register."(7) As such, sites hosted outside China need not register.

It is also notable that the regulation only applies to independent domain names. Sub-domains -- for example, domain names that are hosted under hosting services such as blogbus.com -- need not register. Thus, "blogs on blog-hosting services like Blogbus and Blogchina (which are the Chinese equivalents of Blogger & Typepad), do not need to register as long as the hosting companies themselves have registered."(8) The only Chinese bloggers affected by this regulation are ones who have set up blogs independently, on their own server space. A blogger who sets up a blog as a subdomain within a hosted blog site such as blogbus.com (and whose blog domain would thus be http://bloggername.blogbus.com or similar) would not need to register. However, a blogger who purchases space directly on a server inside China and sets up an independent blog site at a mainland China IP address, with a stand-alone URL (http://bloggername.com, for example) would have to register.

China is supplementing this legal regulation with technical filtering measures as well. To prevent Web site owners from avoiding the registration regulation by migrating their sites to foreign servers, MII has recently blocked several well-known foreign blog hosting services, including Typepad and Blogsome.(9) This filtering pressures blog owners to operate on Chinese blog services, such as Blogdriver, that have registered with MII and that impose their own content controls through keyword filters.(10) 

What Does Registration Require?
The registration process is done entirely through a Web-based form and comprises five steps. First, a Web site owner needs to create an account at the MII registration Web site by entering his / her e-mail address and cell phone number into a Web form and submitting the form. Second, if MII approves the application, the owner receives an eight-digit confirmation code sent to both his / her e-mail account and mobile phone. Third, the owner returns to the MII site, enters the code, and accesses the new account. This allows MII to verify that the cell phone number and e-mail address are associated with the registrant. Fourth, after accessing the account, the Web site owner must fill out an on-line form with his / her name, mobile phone number, home phone number, home address, domain name, host provider, organization, and a description of the site's content.(11)

Web sites carrying certain kinds of content, the provision of which requires separate approval from another government agency, must obtain such approval before MII will grant registration. The categories of content requiring separate approval are listed in Article 11 of the Non-Commercial Website Registration Regulation and include: news; publishing; education; healthcare; medication and medical equipment; culture; and radio, film and television programs.(12). These categories of content have historically been the responsibility of different state agencies, which have produced regulations governing such content on the Internet. For example, the National News and Publishing Administration came out with the Internet Publishing Regulation in 2002.(13) The Ministry of Culture promulgated its Internet Culture Regulation Provisions in 2003.(14) In September 2005, the State Council Information Office and MII promulgated similar rules mandating that only approved entities may publish political news or commentary on the Internet.(15) The Non-Commercial Website Registration Regulation acts in concert with these other regulations to provide the state with more layers of control and more ways of dissuading users from posting prohibited content on-line.

Fifth, after submitting this application, the Web site owner must wait for MII to review it; this usually takes three to five business days. If the application is approved, the Web owner receives a confirmation e-mail message from MII that contains a registration number. At this point, the Web owner has successfully completed registration.

Next, according to Article 13 of the regulation, non-commercial Web site owners "must display their registration numbers in the center of the bottom of their homepages."(16) Under the registration number, the site must provide a URL link to the MII's registration system to allow users to query and verify data about the site's owner and registration.(17) By clicking the link, the public can theoretically see who owns the site and view the owner's other information. ONI tested this method on several Web sites by clicking the link; the website owner data was publicly viewable for some Web sites as a scanned copy of the MII registration permit. In other cases, owner information did not seem as readily accessible, as clicking on the link caused the browser to load a general MII page with a field for inputting a password. Those who falsify registration face potential administrative fines of 10,000 RMB in addition to having the Web sites in question shut down.(18)

Lastly, Article 21 of the regulation requires non-commercial Web site owners to log onto MII’s on-line registration system annually to undergo an identity "examination and verification" process.

Who Is Responsible For Enforcement?
Enforcement of the regulation is a joint effort of MII and Internet Service Providers (ISPs). MII is responsible for locating unregistered sites. ISPs are responsible for enforcing the requirement on owners of unregistered sites that MII locates. According to an official MII report, since ISPs benefit from Web site owners using their services, they are responsible for ensuring compliance with the regulation.(19) ISPs are liable for a 10,000 RMB administrative fine if they host unregistered sites on their services.(20)

The enforcement effort is thus a collaborative process. First, MII uses its automated "Night Crawler System" to check sites in China's IP address block, searching each site for its registration number.(21) Second, the tool reports to MII sites it found that are not registered.(22) Third, MII (and its local branches) require these sites' ISPs to stop providing Internet access services to the unregistered Web sites temporarily (until they register) or permanently (if they refuse to register).(23) ISPs must also check proactively the sites they host and make those that are unregistered inaccessible to the public. It is up to ISPs to decide the method to use to achieve this purpose.(24) In part, this enforcement strategy represents an effort by China to shift the burden of policing the regulation to ISPs. This burden is often likely to fall on small ISPs at the end of the network chain, which host many of the smaller websites affected by this regulation.

As a supplement to the MII regulation, some local governments have imposed additional requirements.(25) The Beijing Security Bureau, for example, issued its May 31 Notice that requires ISPs in Beijing to register with the Public Security Bureau and to be responsible for the individuals or organizations that use their service.(26) These ISPs must keep records of their users and report to the Public Security Bureau any updated information about users who use the ISP to host content.(27)

What Are Penalties For Non-compliance?
Web site owners who fail to comply with the regulation face two punishments: administrative fines and the removal of their content from the Internet as their ISPs make the sites inaccessible to the public. According to the regulation, those who do not register by the deadline will be subject to a fine of 10,000 RMB (roughly $1,200 U.S.) and must comply within a specified period.(28) If the owner does not register within that period and intentionally refuses to comply, his / her site will be shut down.(29) The deadline for compliance was originally set as June 1, 2005(30), but was subsequently extended to June 30, 2005.(31) A site that does not display its registration number will subject the owner to fines ranging from 5,000-10,000 RMB.(32) For most owners, the price of not complying with the registration requirement is prohibitive, since the fine accounts for 1/2 to 2/3 of the annual income of the average Chinese urban citizen (roughly 15,000 RMB).(33)

Since the deadline passed, China's state-run media has reported that provincial authorities are sanctioning and permanently shutting down Web sites that have still failed to register. According to reports from Xinhua News Agency, 404 Web sites that had failed to carry out registration were shut down in Shangdong province by July 18.(34) By July 12, 9,000 Web Sites had been registered, and over 340 domain names that failed to register were permanently shut down in Tianjin(35). Moreover, in Guizhou province, the local communications authority announced that over 1,200 Web sites related to over 2,340 domain names had registered, accounting though for only 80 percent of Web sites. The authorities had issued "sanction and shut down notices" to unregistered Web sites.(36) (The Xinhua report did not provide the source for these statistics.)

In December 2005, the MII, along with its regional counterparts, launched a major effort to shut down unlicensed Web sites.(37) These included such prominent sites as that of Intel, at www.intel.com.cn (though Intel's page was restored after the company registered the site).(38) Administrators for affected Web servers reported that China shut down unregistered sites by blocking relevant ports for those servers, potentially affecting other, properly registered sites as well.(39) This enforcement effort appears to be a significant move to implement the regulation.

How Has The Requirement Affected Web Site Owners?
Most Web site owners in China appear to have complied with the new regulation. According to Xinhua News Agency, by March 23, 2005, the MII had received registration applications for approximately 430,000 domain names, accounting for more than 70% of the 573,755 Web sites located by the Night Crawler System in China's IP address block.(40) (There are, of course, sites that the tool did not locate; thus, this figure does not represent compliance with the regulation overall.) More recent reports paint a broader picture of compliance. A report published by China's Ministry of Information Industry claims that over 99% of independent domain names hosted in China had registered under the new regulation, along with 95% of ICP Web sites and 89% of sites in China's IP address block.(41) The report quoted MII official Su Jinsheng as stating that the next steps for the government include improving "information accuracy" and dealing with sites that have not complied with the registration requirement.(42) However, the recent enforcement campaign launched in December 2005 suggests that the MII perceives that compliance with the regulation is still inadequate.(43)

While some owners encountered problems during their initial attempts to register, all of these owners appear to have succeeded eventually. For example, several press sources reported that one anonymous China-based blogger was told "there was no chance for his independent blog getting permission to publish."(44) However, ONI checked the blogger's site recently and found that it displayed a registration number. In a blog posting, the blogger described how he finally registered, reclaiming his site after it had been shut down for two months. Blogger Isaac Mao noted that terminology matters -- if an applicant refers to his / her blog as a "Web site" rather than a "blog," the likelihood of a successful registration improves.(45)

Reactions to the new regulation have been decidedly mixed. Some Web site owners decided to comply because they believed their sites did not contain sensitive or controversial materials, and did not view the registration process as troublesome. Other Chinese users worry that registration will allow the state to monitor their activities on the Internet and easily track them down, and that their privacy will be breached because the public can easily access site owners' personal information from registration data. Some fear that registration will link them to prohibited content such as criticism of China's government, or that they will incur liability for similar material posted to bulletin board systems hosted on their sites.(46)

Groups such as Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) also protested the new rules, stating that China hopes to push the most outspoken sites to migrate abroad, where they will become inaccessible to those inside China because of the Chinese filtering system.(47) RSF also worries that those who publish under their real names on sites hosted in China will have to avoid political subjects or merely relay official state propaganda on these issues.(48) These concerns are echoed by some Web site owners, who face the choice of registering and potentially incurring liability, shutting down their sites, or moving those sites to servers hosted abroad that are subject to filtering.(49)

Analysis
The new Web site registration regulation operates as another cog in China's system of control over Internet content. In large measure, the regulation is designed to induce Web site owners to forgo potentially sensitive or prohibited content, such as political criticism, by linking their identities to that content. Thus, the regulation operates through a chilling effect.

Effective enforcement of the new regulation depends on the resources China is willing to devote. Given the number of Internet users and ISPs in China, it will take significant resources to enforce the law. Furthermore, enforcement depends heavily on ISPs' cooperation.

Compliance was initially relatively weak. For example, ONI's research found one site that, when ONI loaded it in a Web browser, displayed a pop-up message from MII asking the Web site owner to register it by May 15, 2005, and threatening to shut down the site for failure to do so.(50) However, the site was still accessible -- and unregistered -- on July 12, 2005. (The site was no longer accessible in August 2005, as its domain name registration had expired.) The recent enforcement efforts, though, are pushing Web site owners to comply -- or lose access to their content.

One potential loophole is that it may be difficult for the MII to ensure the information submitted by Web owners is truthful and accurate. Web site owners need only verify their e-mail addresses and cell phone numbers during registration, allowing them to change this contact data afterwards. This, however, requires additional effort by a site's owner that will dissuade at least some. Furthermore, the requirement that Web site owners log onto the MII registration system annually to undergo examination and verification of their information adds additional burden and might increase the chances of getting caught falsifying information.

Overall, ONI believes that the new registration requirement has two key effects that bolster Internet control in China. First, it operates to place Chinese Web site owners on notice that the state is monitoring, and seeks to link them to, Internet content. As blogger Isaac Mao states, registration thus seeks to deter bloggers from posting sensitive materials on their blogs by creating fear about the consequences for so doing.(51) Thus, the state likely seeks to promote blogging as a communications method, but to ensure it operates in a more controlled way.(52) Second, this requirement is another layer in China's multi-modal system of controls over Internet access and content.(53) By creating additional barriers to creating material on-line, and to making it available to the public, the state creates some deterrence and leads Web site owners and bloggers to self-censor what they post. Overall, then, while the new Web site registration requirement is not a major hurdle in itself, it functions as another gear in the sophisticated, widespread, and powerful machinery of state control over the Internet in China.

About the OpenNet Initiative

The OpenNet Initiative is a partnership of the Citizen Lab at the Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford, and the Advanced Network Research Group at the Cambridge Security Programme, University of Cambridge. The OpenNet Initiative releases occasional bulletins based on our ongoing research. These bulletins are meant to be limited, focused responses to current events, policy debates, and/or issues raised by our ongoing research that we feel justify immediate wider circulation. Our more detailed analyses can be found in our major reports.

www.opennetinitiative.net

Notes

1. Although some State Council Orders enacted in 2000 included requirements regarding non-commercial Web site registration, none of them provided details on enforcement. For example, State Council Order No. 292 required non-profit Internet content providers (ICPs) to file official records. See Article 8, Measures on Internet Information Services, State Council Order No. 292, Sept. 25, 2000. Article 9 of Order No. 292 further required that any ICP seeking to operate a bulletin board system (BBS) must apply for a special license. Moreover, the Provisions on the Administration of Internet Electronic Messaging Services provided that ICPs seeking to operate bulletin boards or other electronic communication services were required to obtain approval from the Ministry of Information Industry (MII). See Article 5, Provisions on the Administration of Internet Electronic Messaging Services, State Council, Oct. 27, 2000.

2. In this report, "feijingying" is translated as "non-commercial."

3. See Ministry of Information Industry, Regulation on Non-Commercial Websites Registration, Jan. 2005, available at http://www.mii.gov.cn/art/2005/12/17/art_873_3846.html .

4. Getting ID card for Your Website, China Information Industry, June 1, 2005, at http://www.cnii.com.cn/20050508/ca299931.htm.

5. Ministry of Information Industry, Regulation on Non- Commercial Websites Registration.

6. Ministry of Information Industry, Regulation on Non- Commercial Websites Registration.

7. China using new "Night Crawler System" to monitor internet and close unregistered websites, Interfax-China, June 3, 2005, at http://www.interfax.cn/showfeature.asp?aid=2367.

8. Skypecast: Isaac Mao on China's crackdown, Global Voices, June 10, 2005, at http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2005/06/10/skypecast-isaac-mao-on-chinas-blog-registration-situation/.

9. See Typepad in China, June 24, 2005, at http://www.sixapart.com/typepad/news/2005/06/typepad_in_chin.html.

10. See OpenNet Initiative, Filtering by Domestic Blog Providers in China, Jan. 20, 2005, at http://www.opennetinitiative.net/bulletins/008/.

11. See Ministry of Information Industry, Form of Registration, available at http://www.mii.gov.cn/art/2005/12/17/art_873_3846.html; see also Wang Jianshuo, My Site is Almost Legal In China, June 18, 2005, at http://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/20050618_my_site_is_almost_legal_in_china.htm.

12. Ministry of Information Industry, Regulation on Non- Commercial Websites Registration.

13. Internet Publishing Regulation, available at http://www.jincao.com/fa/law14.17.htm.

14. Internet Culture Regulation Provisions, available at http://bar.enorth.com.cn/system/2004/08/05/000836535.shtml.

15. Rules on the Administration of Internet News Information Services, available at http://www.cecc.gov/pages/virtualAcad/index.phpd?showsingle=24396; see also OpenNet Initiative, Analysis of China's Rules on the Administration of Internet News Information Services, at http://www.opennetinitiative.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=Reports&file=index (forthcoming).

16. Ministry of Information Industry, Regulation on Non- Commercial Websites Registration.

17. Ministry of Information Industry, Regulation on Non- Commercial Websites Registration.

18. Ministry of Information Industry, Regulation on Non- Commercial Websites Registration.

19. Ministry of Information Industry News, MII Starts Registration of Non- Commercial Websites, May 30, 2005, at http://www.mii.gov.cn/art/2005/12/29/art_1003_4062.html.

20. See Ministry of Information Industry News, MII Starts Registration of Non- Commercial Websites; Ministry of Information Industry, Regulation on Non- Commercial Websites Registration, Article 24.

21. See, e.g., Elaine Kurtenbach, China Orders All Web Sites to Register, Associated Press, June 7, 2005, available at http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0605/233992.html. For an analysis of the Night Crawler system, see Night Crawler, June 6, 2005, at http://ice.citizenlab.org/?p=114.

22. See Ministry of Information Industry News, MII Starts Registration of Non- Commercial Websites.

23. See Ministry of Information Industry News, MII Starts Registration of Non- Commercial Websites.

24. See Ministry of Information Industry News, MII Starts Registration of Non- Commercial Websites.

25. Currently, Beijing, Guangzhou, and Qingdao require Web sites to register with local Security Bureaus.

26. Beijing Security Bureau, Notice on Registration of Mid Size and Small Size Websites with Beijing Security Bureau, May 31, 2005, at http://news.sohu.com/20050601/n225789219.shtml.

27. See Beijing Security Bureau, Notice on Registration of Mid Size and Small Size Websites with Beijing Security Bureau.

28. See Ministry of Information Industry News, MII Starts Registration of Non- Commercial Websites.

29. See Ministry of Information Industry News, MII Starts Registration of Non- Commercial Websites.

30. See Boxun News, China's Internet facing the Coldest Winter, Mar. 23, 2005, at http://www.peacehall.com/news/gb/china/2005/03/200503230320.shtml.

31. See Beijing Security Bureau, Notice on Registration of Mid Size and Small Size Websites with Beijing Security Bureau.

32. Beijing Security Bureau, Notice on Registration of Mid Size and Small Size Websites with Beijing Security Bureau.

33. National Bureau of Statistics of China, Statistics of Average Income of Urban Population, 2004, at http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/yb2004-c/indexch.htm.

34. See Xinhua News Agency, Shandong Shuts Down 404 Internet Web Sites that Refuse to Carry Out Registration, July 18, 2005, at http://www.sd.xinhuanet.com/news/2005-07/18/content_4656866.htm.

35. See People's Daily, 9,000 Web Sites Register; Over 340 Domain Names Are Permanently Shut Down, July 12, 2005, at http://tj.people.com.cn/GB/channel2/5/200507/12/4768.html.

36. See Xinhua News Agency, Increases Monitoring and Supervision of Internet Web Sites, July 17, 2005, at http://www.xinhuanet.com/chinanews/2005-07/17/content_4655948.htm.

37. John Liu, China Closes Unregistered Websites En Masse Before Christmas, Interfax China, Dec. 26, 2005, at http://www.interfax.cn/showfeature.asp?aid=8693&slug=LEGAL%20NAME.

38. Liu, China Closes Unregistered Websites En Masse Before Christmas.

39. Liu, China Closes Unregistered Websites En Masse Before Christmas. A port designates an application that runs on a server; for example, the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) normally communicates at port 80. Thus, blocking all traffic to port 80 on a server would prevent users from accessing any material, such as a Web site, obtained over HTTP.

40. Getting ID Card for Your Website, China Information Industry, June 1, 2005, at http://www.cnii.com.cn/20050508/ca299931.htm.

41. Congressional-Executive Commission on China, MII Reports China's Government Has Met its Goals in Private Web Site Crackdown, Aug. 18, 2005, at http://www.cecc.gov/pages/virtualAcad/index.phpd?PHPSESSID=8f6857bb7c00f33c508ea2d632cfa39e#id20852 (translating the MII report).

42. Congressional-Executive Commission on China, MII Reports China's Government Has Met its Goals in Private Web Site Crackdown.

43. See Liu, China Closes Unregistered Websites En Masse Before Christmas.

44. Reporters Sans Frontieres, Authorities declare war on unregistered websites and blogs, June 6, 2005, at http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=14010.

45. Skypecast: Isaac Mao on China's crackdown, Global Voices.

46. Liu, China Closes Unregistered Websites En Masse Before Christmas.

47. Reporters Sans Frontieres, Authorities declare war on unregistered websites and blogs.

48. Reporters Sans Frontieres, Authorities declare war on unregistered websites and blogs.

49. Liu, China Closes Unregistered Websites En Masse Before Christmas.

50. This site, http://www.behone.com/bd/Open.htm, contained content on environment protection. When ONI accessed www.behone.com, a pop-up message displayed the following text: "According to the provisions of "Non-Commercial Internet Information Service Registration Rule" (effective March 20), all websites must be put on record. But your website has not been put on record. After seeing this notice, please register your web space through the system of Ministry of Information Industries: http://www.miibeian.gov.cn. For the websites which fail to lodge applications before May 15, we will temporarily suspend them. For more details, please refer to the notice on the homepage of our website". However, when we clicked the pop-up box's "OK" button, we were able to load the Web site, though it loaded more slowly than most other comparable sites. When ONI re-tested the site on August 11, 2005, it was not available, as its domain name registration had expired on July 23, 2005.

51. Skypecast: Isaac Mao on China's crackdown, Global Voices.

52. See Skypecast: Isaac Mao on China's crackdown, Global Voices.

53. See generally OpenNet Initiative, Internet Filtering in China in 2004-2005, at http://www.opennetinitiative.net/studies/china/.