China's New Regulation on Cyber Bullying

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Unlike physical bullying, cyber bullying involves haranguing someone by spreading mean words, lies, and false rumors through e-mails, text messages, and social media posts. Since it’s largely done behind the screen using the protection of a pseudonym, cyber bullying could be worse and more hurtful than physical bullying.

On Dec 20 The Cyberspace Administration of China announced its new regulation on Ecological Management of Network Information Content to tackle cyber bullying, which will go into effect on March 1, 2020.

According to the new regulation, producers, users, and platforms of network information content services shall use the Internet in a civilized and healthy way, and shall not carry out illegal activities, such as Internet violence, human flesh search, deep forgery, fake web traffic, and account manipulation.

Those who violate these provisions shall be subject to disciplinary measures, such as online behavior restrictions, account closures, and industry bans.

In recent years, there have been several high-profile cases reported in the media of young people committing suicide as a direct result of being victims of cyber bullying. The topic drew further attention when three K-pop stars committed suicide due to constant cyber bullying earlier this year.

In 2018, a female doctor committed suicide in Deyang, Sichuan province due to an online outcry and rumors after she was attacked by two teenage boys in a swimming pool and got in a fight with the boys’ families. 

Later that year in another cyber bulying case, a blogger identified by Sina Weibo as “writer Chen Lan” accused one girl’s parents of torturing their daughter to death and claimed that her parents created a fraudulent donation page on an online fundraising website, Shuidi Chou. The false accusations caused outrage amongst netizens who started to harass the girl’s parents.

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In Oct 2014, some regulations were rolled out to tackle cyber bullying issues, including the network violence infringes on the right of name, reputation, and privacy issues. However, there is some insufficient legal applicability.

“The new regulation further refines some of the broad requirements for Internet content in the cyber security law,” professor Wang Sixin of the Political Science and Law Department of the Communication University of China, told Legal Daily. “The advantage of such an arrangement is, make Internet users have a clear direction. It makes it easier for content providers and consumers to produce, communicate, and distribute content according to these standards.”

Photo: pixabay.com

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