China has shut down or revoked the licenses of 13,000
websites since 2015 for violating the country's internet rules, state
media reported on Sunday.
The news comes as the Communist
country continues to strengthen its already tight regulation of the
internet, a move which critics say has picked up pace since President Xi
Jinping came to power in 2012.
Platforms have also
closed nearly 10 million internet accounts for "violating service
protocol", the official news agency said on Sunday, likely referring to
social media accounts.
"These moves have a powerful deterrent effect," Xinhua quoted Wang Shengjun, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), as saying.
Despite
being home to the world's largest number of internet users, a 2015
report by US think tank Freedom House found that the country had the
most restrictive online use policies of 65 nations it studied, ranking
below Iran and Syria.
This year alone, it has enacted new
rules requiring foreign tech companies to store user data inside the
country, imposed fresh content restrictions, and made it increasingly
difficult to use software tools that allow users to circumvent censors.
Google, Facebook, Twitter and The New York Times are all blocked in China, among countless other foreign websites.
Beijing
strictly defends what it calls "cyber sovereignty" and maintains that
its various forms of web censorship — collectively known as "The Great
Firewall" — are necessary for protecting its national security.
Within
China, websites must register with authorities and are responsible for
"ensuring the legality of any information" posted on their platforms,
according to regulations in force since 2000.
When their content runs afoul of authorities, they can be shutdown or fined.
One
way to bypass the strictly controlled domestic internet is by using a
virtual private network (VPN) which can allow users to access the
unfiltered global internet. But here too authorities have cracked down.
Earlier
this week, Wu Xiangyang from the southern Guangxi Zhuang autonomous
region was sentenced to five and a half years in prison for selling a
VPN service on Alibaba's Taobao and other marketplaces.
