Cyberspace Administration of China

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC; Chinese: 国家互联网信息办公室; lit.: 'State Internet Information Office'), also known as the Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission (Chinese: 中央网络安全和信息化委员会办公室) and the Office of the Central Leading Group for Cyberspace Affairs (Chinese: 中央网络安全和信息化领导小组),[2][3][4] is the central Internet regulator, censor, oversight, and control agency for the People's Republic of China.[5]

Cyberspace Administration of China
国家互联网信息办公室
Formation2014
TypeSupra-ministerial policy coordination and consultation body
PurposeCyberspace policy and regulatory oversight
Location
  • Beijing
Leader
Xi Jinping
Deputy Leaders
Li Keqiang
Liu Yunshan
Head
Zhuang Rongwen (庄荣文)[1]
Parent organization
Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission
China
This article is part of a series on the
politics and government of
China
Publicity
 China portal

The CAC was founded in 2014. As of August 2018, the agency is headed by Zhuang Rongwen (庄荣文).[6] The CAC answers to the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission, which is headed by the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Xi Jinping. The deputy heads are Li Keqiang, the Premier of the State Council of China, and Liu Yunshan, the head of the Central Leading Group for Propaganda and Ideology.

Bureaucratic structure

The CAC, based on the same bureaucracy as the Communist Party's Office for Foreign Propaganda, is involved in the formulation and implementation of policy on a variety of issues related to the Chinese Internet.

The CAC includes the following departments: an Internet Security Emergency Command Center, an Agency Service Center, and an Illegal and Unhealthy Information Reporting Center.[7]

The efforts of the CAC have been linked with a broader push by the administration of Party General Secretary Xi Jinping, characterized by Xiao Qiang, head of China Digital Times, as a "ferocious assault on civil society." This has included forced confessions of television journalists, military parades, harsh media censorship and more.[8]

The CAC also maintains some censorship functions, including issuing directives to media companies in China. After a campaign to arrest almost 200 lawyers and activists in China, the CAC published a directive saying that "All websites must, without exception, use as the standard official and authoritative media reports with regards to the detention of trouble-making lawyers by the relevant departments."[8]

Lu Wei, until 2016 the head of the CAC, was previously the head of the Beijing Propaganda Department, and oversaw the Internet Management Office, a "massive human effort" that involved over 60,000 Internet propaganda workers and two million others employed off-payroll. It was this experience that assisted General Secretary Xi Jinping in selecting Lu as the head of the newly formed Internet regulator, the CAC.[9]

Policies

Among the areas the CAC regulates include usernames on the Chinese Internet, the appropriateness of remarks made online, virtual private networks, the content of Internet portals, and much more. The CAC was behind a warning given to the major web service Sina Weibo, which was threatened with closure unless it "improved censorship." The CAC said that Sina had failed to properly police the comments made by users on the Internet.

According to a draft Cyber Security Law, made public on July 6, 2015, the CAC works with other Chinese regulators to formulate a catalog of "key network equipment" and "specialized network security products" for certification. The CAC is also involved in reviewing the procurement of network products or services for national security considerations. Data stored outside of China by Chinese companies is also required to undergo CAC approval.[10]

According to Xinhua, the official state news agency, the CAC was responsible for issuing a "voluntary pledge" that was intended to be adhered to by the major Internet portals in China about the comments that would or would not be allowed to be made on their website. Among the categories of comments that were banned, included were those that "harmed national security," "harmed the nation's honor or interest," "damaged the nation's religious policies," "spread rumors, disturbed public order," and "intentionally using character combinations to avoid censorship."[11]

The CAC was also responsible for chasing down Internet users and web sites that published "rumors" following an explosion in the port city of Tianjin. Such rumors included claims that blasts killed 1,000 people, or that there was looting, or leadership ructions as a result of the blast.[12]

The CAC has been given the responsibility for reviewing the security of devices made by foreign countries.[13][14]

In May 2020, the CAC announced a campaign to "clean up" online political and religious content deemed "illegal."[15]

In July 2020, CAC commenced a three-month censorship action on We-Media in China.[16]

Public reception

Internet users in China have generally regarded the CAC with anger, given its central role in regulating and blocking the content they have access to. In January 2015, the CAC debuted a song that The New York Times called "a throwback to revolutionary songs glorifying the state." The song included the lines: “Unified with the strength of all living things, Devoted to turning the global village into the most beautiful scene” and “An Internet power: Tell the world that the Chinese Dream is uplifting China.”[17]

The CAC has also been accused of assisting in cyber attacks against visitors to Chinese websites. The anti-censorship group GreatFire.org provided data and reports showing man-in-the-middle attacks against major foreign web services, including iCloud, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google. The attack would have required the ability to "tap into the backbone of the Chinese Internet."[18]

Gibson Research Corporation attributed some of the attacks against GitHub to the CAC's operations. In the attack, ads hosted on Baidu were able to leverage computers visiting from outside China, redirecting their traffic to overload the servers of GitHub. "The tampering takes places someplace between when the traffic enters China and when it hits Baidu's servers," Gibson wrote. "This is consistent with previous malicious actions and points to the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) being directly involved..."[19]

gollark: I would use a digital miner on them, except I can't get one to configure it with.
gollark: They are *also* not on the surface.
gollark: The AR wiki says they are in "crystal chasm" biomes but those don't exist either.
gollark: Even in the caves.
gollark: I'm there, but it's entirely "oxidized ferric sand". I don't see them anywhere.

See also

References
  1. Gan, Nectar (September 20, 2018). "Cyberspace controls set to strengthen under China's new internet boss". South China Morning Post.
  2. Cyberspace Administration of China launches official website Archived 2020-03-11 at the Wayback Machine, English.gov.cn, 31 Dec 2014
  3. Web of Laws: How China's new Cyberspace Administration is securing its grip on the internet Archived 2019-08-23 at the Wayback Machine, HKFP, by David Bandurski, 7 May 2017
  4. "Cyberspace Administration of China launches official website". Xinhua. 2014-12-31. Archived from the original on 2015-03-31. Retrieved 2015-08-17.
  5. Cheung, Jennifer (14 July 2015). "China's 'great firewall' just got taller". openDemocracy. Archived from the original on 6 September 2015. Retrieved 17 August 2015.
  6. "庄荣文任中央网信办主任 徐麟不再担任". 人民网. 2018-08-01. Archived from the original on 2020-02-22.
  7. "中央网信办所属事业单位面向社会公开招聘-新华网". news.xinhuanet.com. Archived from the original on 2015-10-24. Retrieved 2015-10-25.
  8. Qiang, Xiao (September 18, 2015). "Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) Hearing: Urging China's President Xi Jinping to Stop State-Sponsored Human Rights Abuses" (PDF). CECC. CECC. Archived (PDF) from the original on December 8, 2015. Retrieved November 30, 2015.
  9. Cairns, Christopher (January 1, 2015). "Seizing Weibo's "Commanding Heights" Through Bureaucratic Re-centralization" (PDF). Dissertation. Archived (PDF) from the original on December 8, 2015. Retrieved December 2, 2015.
  10. Norton Rose Fulbright (July 2015). "Cyber security in China" (PDF). Norton Rose Fulbright. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2016-03-04.
  11. "29家网站签署《跟帖评论自律管理承诺书》". news.sina.com.cn. Archived from the original on 2015-12-08. Retrieved 2015-11-30.
  12. "China Cracks Down on Websites Accused of Spreading 'Rumors' About the Tianjin Blast | VICE News". VICE News. 2015-08-17. Archived from the original on 2015-12-08. Retrieved 2015-11-30.
  13. Mozur, Paul; Perlez, Jane (2016-05-16). "China Quietly Targets U.S. Tech Companies in Security Reviews". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2020-01-16. Retrieved 2020-04-22.
  14. Wang, Yifan (2020-04-27). "China Toughens Procurement Rules for Tech Equipment". The Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Archived from the original on 2020-04-27. Retrieved 2020-04-28.
  15. "The State Cyberspace Administration of the People's Republic of China launched the 2020 "Qinglang" special action for a period of 8 months" (in Chinese). People's Daily. May 22, 2020. Retrieved 2020-06-18.
  16. Yu, Junjie (29 July 2020). "To safeguard national security, it is time for China to build up nuclear deterrent". Xinhua News Agency. Retrieved 30 July 2020.
  17. "China's Internet Censorship Anthem Is Revealed, Then Deleted". Sinosphere Blog. 2015-02-12. Archived from the original on 2015-09-08. Retrieved 2015-10-21.
  18. "An Open Letter to Lu Wei and the Cyberspace Administration of China | GreatFire.org". en.greatfire.org. Archived from the original on 2015-06-30. Retrieved 2015-10-21.
  19. Gibson Research Corporation (March 31, 2015). "Security Now! #501" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on September 6, 2015.
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