Dateline: BEIJINGChina has passed harsh new restrictions on Internet cafes, banning minors and demanding operators register users and keep records of what information they access on line.
The regulations, which take effect Nov. 15, impose tougher safety standards and requirements for licensing businesses that provide computers and Internet access to users who pay by the session. Smoking is to be banned, no cafe can open within 200 meters (124 feet) of a school, and all must close by midnight.
Though the rules were prompted by a deadly fire in an Internet cafe, they point to long-held fears among China's communist leaders that the Internet could nurture subversion.
According to a copy of the regulations issued by the official Xinhua News Agency, operators must post a sign warning users not to access sites or download information about a long list of subjects, many of them politically sensitive.
Sites offering gambling, prostitution, pornography, crime and violence are banned. But so too are those that "harm national unification, sovereignty and territorial integrity" _ a reference to advocacy of independence for Tibet, the western region of Xinjiang and self-governing Taiwan, which China claims as its territory.
Other sites forbidden are those that harm ethnic unity, incite racial hatred, sabotage social stability, undermine the government's strict rules on religious expression or popularize cults and superstition.
Some banned areas are almost too broad to be defined, a common feature in the Chinese legal system that allows prosecutors to define public information as state secrets. The rules forbid information that "threatens national security or harms national dignity and national interests," as well as that which "opposes basic constitutional principles."
Operators must keep records of users and the sites they access on record for two months and provide the information on request to police and regulators. Violators face fines of up to 15,000 yuan (US$1,800).
Xinhua said the rules aim to bring order to an industry that has expanded rapidly with little regulation.
"The business order is chaotic, safety is a problem, fires have occurred and the health and safety of the broad masses of the people, especially the young, have been seriously harmed," it said.
While China wants to develop the Internet to aid its growing economy, it has taken unprecedented measures to keep it from becoming a resource for free exchange of information and ideas. China has more than 45 million Internet users, most of whom gain access from connections at home or in the office.
Already, China operates a special force to police the Internet for content deemed subversive. Unknown scores of Websites are blocked due to their content and such Internet staples as the search engines Google and AltaVista have been shut off to users in China because they permitted access to information on the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement and other sensitive topics.
Many of the regulations, including the requirement to register information users access, were already in force in Beijing.
All of Beijing's Internet cafes were shut after an August fire in a cafe in the capital's university district that killed 25 people. Other parts of the country followed suit, although most have since allowed cafes to reopen.
The fire prompted a storm of criticism of Internet cafes in the official media, especially the claim they were corrupting young people with computer games. Many cafes simply linked computers to allow users to play against each other _ a practice banned under the new rules.
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