Pending Chinese law might turn the country’s internet into an intranet

Image by TiA. Original server image: Wikimedia.

A piece of legislation currently under consideration by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) is causing confusion among observers. It’s either a complete censorship apocalypse that would turn China’s internet into an intranet, or just another set of humdrum regulations.

Dubbed the “Internet Domain Name Management Rules (Opinion-seeking Revision Draft),” the pending legislation is now open for public comment until April 25. Its writing is inartful and ambiguous – leaving readers to jump to their own conclusions, some of which are pretty dire. The full draft of the law can be viewed here (link in Chinese).

State-run paper the Global Times did a pretty good job of capturing the ambiguity of the law in its English coverage – that’s not a compliment – with a report that hinged on the phrase:

“Internet domain names with access to China should be provided by domestic internet domain name registration services, which should in turn be managed by Chinese institutions. Service providers that are not under the management of Chinese institutions cannot offer domain names with access to China.”

Global Times describes the law as “unprecedented,” and states that violators may be fined up to RMB 30,000 (US$4,620).

Article 6 will save us – maybe

In its most pessimistic reading, the law give Chinese authorities a legal basis to block all connections to domains registered outside of China – essentially cutting the country off from any ‘.com’, ‘.net’, etc., websites and only allowing ‘.cn’, ‘.中国’ domains.

That’s the reading that many online commenters have taken, and it is also the interpretation that the Wall Street Journal has run with. The paper says the legislation would “effectively wall off the world’s most populous country from vast swaths of the internet.”

This could actually be aimed at foreign domain suppliers like GoDaddy.

But it’s hardly that clear. The law focuses on regulations of “top-level domains” (e.g. .cn/.com/) and it gives Chinese internet service providers the authority to regulate what happens on those domains within their control. Article six of the law states: “‘.cn’ and ‘.中国’ are China’s national top-level domains.”

Some have interpreted the law to mean that Chinese authorities want any .cn address to be officially approved by the nation’s authorities, but that other domains are not affected by the legislation. That’s hardly an open stance to take, but it is substantially less restrictive than outright blocking all domains that haven’t gone through that process.

Even this slightly more optimistic take would wreak havoc on any .cn domain provider not based in the mainland. For example, the world’s biggest domain supplier, GoDaddy, sells .cn domains throughout Asia, especially in Hong Kong and Singapore, but does not actually operate in mainland China. This law could mean that those .cn domains would need to be switched over to domestic Chinese hosts – lest they be blocked by the Great Firewall, which could identify their foreign IP addresses.

Cut off?

Within the Wall Street Journal article, one expert notes that, “They [the government] can always backtrack since [the law is] vague and enforcement is sometimes lax.”

China is moving toward more restriction, not less.