Great Firewall of China: Requires Registration of Apps, Tightening Oversight...
China Tightens Apps Oversight
Beijing begins requiring the country’s hundreds of
internet app stores to register with the state
By EVA DOU Jan. 16, 2017 7:00 a.m. ET
BEIJING—Plugging a gap in the Great Firewall, China on
Monday began requiring internet app stores to register with the state.
China has long censored websites, barring outlawed
content such as pornography, the promotion of illegal activity including
terrorism and “rumors,” a term regulators often apply to antigovernment
statements.
But apps create a special challenge for government
censors, experts say, because they often incorporate a wide variety of
functions and serve as platforms for users to exchange information, making them
harder to oversee. They are also multiplying quickly.
“It’s almost impossible for the regulators to register
and supervise all the millions of apps there one by one,” said Zhu Wei, deputy
director of the Communications Law Research Center at the China University of
Political Science and Law. “The government is managing the app stores, and
stores are managing the app developers according to law.”
The Cyberspace Administration of China, which announced
new regulations on content distributed by apps in August, followed up Friday by
notifying app stores that starting Monday they must register with the CAC.
“Some app distributors did not strictly review apps
before putting them on the shelf, which resulted in some apps spreading illegal
information, violating users’ rights and interests and bringing security
risks,” the CAC statement read.
Earlier this month, Apple Inc. said it had pulled the New
York Times’ app from its Chinese app store after a request from Chinese
authorities. The new registration requirement, however, appears directed at new
app stores that are cropping up rather than at larger distributors, with which
regulators are already in regular contact.
In addition to banned content such as pornography, the
state-run National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical
Team/Coordination Center of China has warned consumers against malicious apps,
including ones that harvest personal information and levy charges without their
knowledge.
The U.S.-China Business Council declined to comment on
the new requirement.
China’s authorities rely heavily on internet companies to
censor themselves in the world’s largest mobile market, which is both
fast-growing and fragmented, with hundreds of suppliers—in contrast with the
U.S., where Google Play and Apple Inc.’s App Store dominate.
China’s most popular Android-based app stores, run by
Baidu Inc. and Tencent Holdings Ltd., both had more than 200 million active
users in the third quarter of 2016, according to the research firm Analysys.
—Yang Jie contributed to this article.
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