China is launching its strongest official measure yet to quell electronic expressions of discontent, clamping down on its versions of Twitter that have increasingly fueled once-rare protests and threaten to undermine its leaders’ firm hold on power.In the name of defending Chinese cyberspace against “harmful information,” the Beijing city government announced new rules likely to chill a raucous national conversation on services like Sina Weibo, to which Chinese users are flooding to share brief text messages, photos and video. Officials will require users who post so-called microblogs to register their real names with the microblogging services — to be verified by government authorities — sweeping away the anonymity that has helped cloak dissidents online.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204643804577101522579231922.htmlAlso see:Beijing Imposes New Rules on Social Networking Sites
Officials announced new rules on Friday aimed at controlling the way Chinese Internet users post messages on social networking sites that have posed challenges to the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda machinery.For many users, the most striking of the new rules requires people using the sites, called microblogs, or weibo in Chinese, to register with their real names and biographical information. They will still be able to post under aliases, according to a report by Xinhua, the state news agency.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/17/world/asia/beijing-imposes-new-rules-on-social-networking-sites.htmlBeijing requires real names in microblog registration
The popular adage, “On the Internet, nobody knows you are a dog,” may not be always ring true as authorities in Beijing city have ordered real name registrations on microblogging services.Government agencies in Beijing published new rules Friday requiring users of the country’s Twitter-like microblogging services to provide their true identities when registering for microblog accounts.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2011-12/16/c_131310381.htm