China Just Banned These 9 Topics from Group Chats

Ahead of the Party Congress in October, China has issued a series of new rules aimed at tightening control over group chats and public accounts on China-based social media and messaging platforms.

The two new sets of regulations were issued by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) last week and are set to go into effect on October 8, 2017, just before the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party convenes in Beijing. The rules apply to messaging apps such as Tencent's WeChat and QQ, Alibaba's Alipay Chat, Baidu's Tieba, Sina's Weibo and other social media platforms.

According to China Daily, the rules are intended to "better develop China’s online environment, protect the legal rights of Chinese netizens and online organizations, and safeguard national security and the public interest." 

Last week, we told you about a few strict new rules that some platforms are being required to follow, such as credit rating systems, blacklists and making admins take full responsibility for their group chats.

Along with these new regulations, China's national Public Security Bureau (PSB) also issued an urgent warning listing taboo topics that users will be banned from discussing in group chats. The warning was issued on September 11 — shortly after the CAC announced its new rules — and released to several state media outlets.

Here are the nine topics that are prohibited from being discussed in group chats on Chinese online messaging platforms, according to the PSB (translation via SupChina):

1. Poltically sensitive content

2. Rumors

3. Internal memos [from the Chinese Communist Party and government units]

4. Content that is vulgar, pornographic, violent or shows drug-related criminal acts

5. News from Hong Kong and Macau that has not been reported by official media outlets

6. Military data

7. State secrets

8. Videos from anonymous sources that insult or destroy police’s reputation or appear to be fabricated

9. Other illegal information that violates laws or regulations

Reiterating that group chat members, especially admins/organizers, should be responsible for online discussions, the PSB also noted a few recent examples in which users had been detained as punishment for violating the rules.

In one case, an Anhui man was held for five days after criticizing police online following a drunk driving conviction.

In another incident, some Hubei residents were "criticized and educated" by police after protesting a local project via posts in a group chat in June 2016. Police approached the group's admin, who didn't actually disseminate the messages in question, to scold him from failing to stop the spread of the "inappropriate" information in a timely manner.

A third case saw a Shenyang man arrested for not preventing the spread of pornography in a 100+ person group chat. Police detained the group administrator after members of the chat discussion asked members to pay to access a "big hit movie" (which turned out to be pornographic).

And finally, another man in Liaoning was sentenced to two and a half years in prison (with a three year suspension) and slapped with a RMB50,000 fine after abusing the "red envelope" (hongbao) function in several group chats between June and August 2015. The court ruled that he had been taking advantage of the hongbao function for gambling purposes.

It's unclear in those four cases whether the group chats were monitored by users, the platforms themselves, or both.

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