MySpace, the world's most popular online social network, has launched a version of its Web site in China, despite fears among human-rights campaigners that users will be censored or spied on by the totalitarian Communist state.
Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of News Corp, which owns MySpace, said last year that the company was looking for a way to enter China without running into political obstacles of the type faced by Google, which agreed to self-censor its content; and by Yahoo, which has repeatedly provided the Chinese government with information allowing them to identify anonymous Web users.
Both companies have been targeted by Irrepressible.info, the joint campaign run by the Observer newspaper and Amnesty International calling for freedom of speech online.
Murdoch has set up a separate business to avoid any problems. MySpace China is a "locally owned, operated and managed company" in which News Corp is only one among several investors, according to its chief executive, Luo Chuan, the former head of Microsoft's MSN China.
"Our team here will have the sole right to decide the operation model, the technology platform as well as the product strategy. It's very unlike the other multinationals you might have heard about or seen in the Chinese market," he said.
Campaigners fear that the site, which allows users to share text, pictures, music and videos, will provide another means for China's army of Internet police to gather information on users.
Dozens of Chinese bloggers have been jailed for posting political comments or spreading information concerning corruption and human-rights violations.
Even with MySpace China still in its "beta" testing stage, allegations of censorship have emerged. According to the technology news site Texyt.com, discussion forums on religion and politics are nowhere to be found on MySpace.cn, despite being popular topics on the main MySpace sites. Instead, users are only offered safer topics such as sport and films.
Texyt also reports that users are told to click a button if they spot any "misconduct" by other users -- actions such as "endangering national security, leaking state secrets, subverting the government, undermining national unity, spreading rumors or disturbing the social order."
Attempts to post content containing a variety of sensitive terms, such as "Taiwanese independence," "Falun Gong" or "Dalai Lama," produce the following message: "Sorry, the article you want to publish may contain inappropriate content. Please delete the unsuitable content, and then try reposting it. Thank you."
Ron Deibert of the OpenNet Initiative, an alliance opposed to the filtering of the Internet, said: "We should look at it along the same lines as other technology investors in the country that had to alter their conduct to comply with Chinese restrictions."
MySpace issued a statement which said: "As a locally owned, operated and managed company, MySpace China complies with local law and legal enforcement requests."
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
RSS