China steps up Internet control with video rules

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: China is expected to take a new step on Thursday to tighten control of the Internet when rules go into force limiting online video-sharing to state companies. But regulators, wary of hurting a fast-growing industry, are expected to let private operators work around the restrictions.

The rules are aimed at expanding a Chinese censorship system that tries to block Internet use to spread dissent while promoting it for business and education. Communist leaders are especially anxious about unflattering video showing up online ahead of the

Beijing Olympics in August, a major prestige project.

“It seems to be that political content is the foremost concern,” said Duncan Clark, chairman of BDA China, a research firm in Beijing. The rules came in a surprise announcement December 29, just four weeks before they take effect—a move possibly driven by urgency about getting controls in place ahead of the Summer Games.

Online video has exploded in popularity in China, which has 210 million people online and says it expects to surpass US this year as the world’s biggest population of Internet users.

Sites such as Tudou.com, 56.com and Youku.com say they get as many as 100 million viewers a day, a scale that rivals China’s biggest state TV channels. Some offer full-length television programs, but many popular videos are created by amateurs. The companies have raised tens of millions of dollars from investors. “Online video is increasingly becoming a sizable media platform,” said Edward Yu, president of Analysys International, a

Chinese technology consulting firm. “They are trying to attract users who traditionally watch TV and might now get their programming online.”

China enforces the world’s most extensive system of Web monitoring and censorship and has issued a welter of regulations in response to the rise of blogging and other trends. Operators are required to monitor Web pages and bulletin boards and delete content deemed subversive.

But online video’s stunning growth appears to have caught regulators by surprise, possibly prompting the rushed release of rules that are unusually strict by the standards of earlier controls.