China moves to end Internet anonymity by requiring real names

Text of a speech made by a government official in China back in April indicates the country plans to require Internet surfers in the country to use their real names. The transcript of the comments by the State Council Information Office's Wang Chen had been removed from the legislature website by Chinese officials.

It is not known why the government moved to scrub Wang's words, although it can be speculated it had to do with the likely unpopularity of such a move. The text was recovered by New York interest group Human Rights in China, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

Comments posted anonymously or even just the concept of surfing the web should be tacked to a real name, Wang told legislators. This would make it easier than ever for the government to monitor and suppress what it considers subversive speech, allowing it to clamp dow even harder on those who dare defy it.

Google attempted to defy the country by stating it would no longer censor in China, and redirecting users in the country to the Hong Kong version of its search engine. That nearly cost the site its license to operate, and last week it relented, agreeing to terms from the Chinese government in return for its license renewal.

China has also blocked western websites from time to time for various reasons, including sites such as YouTube. Typically the sites return within a matter of days, and the blocks have something to do with some type of content the Chinese government finds objectionable.

The concept of the real name system is not necessarily new. As early as last year, the Chinese have been pushing such a system, and even earlier than that. However, the country has seemed to pull back after heavy public criticism of its plans.

China has the largest number of citizens online, numbering about 400 million. It is also widely considered one of the heaviest censors of the Internet to its own citizens.