Chengdu to civilize cyberspace

Local authorities in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, are to recruit 1,000 volunteers to safeguard and moderate the online environment, according to local media reports.

The volunteers will guide Web users to not use curse words or believe rumors, purifying the online environment by means of publishing posts, comments and articles, the Chengdu Daily reported Wednesday.

"Chengdu will recruit 1,000 volunteers, among whom there will be 100 talented moderators and at least 15 commenters to make Chengdu's cyberspace more civilized," an official from the city's civilization office told the paper.

The team, to be trained by experts in online writing and website editing, will be in charge of spreading socialist core values and ideology via blogs, microblogs and chat applications.

However, the move triggered huge concerns among Chengdu Web users. Many of them worry that this might eventually enlarge the online presence of the "50 Cent Party," a term to describe Web users who are supposedly paid 5 jiao ($0.08) for online posts which contain favorable comments about the government.

"I don't need someone from the government to tell me what I should say on the Internet. I would say it anyway," a Chengdu Web user surnamed Zhou told the Global Times.

Some parents have a different position on the cyber campaign. A Beijing mother surnamed Wu, who has a 16-year-old son, said that there are too many negative messages on the Internet and it might affect how her son sees the world. "Chengdu is setting a good example of how to solve this problem," she said.

Xu Jingbo, bureau chief of Japan's Asia News Agency in Tokyo, posted on his Sina microblog that he worries the Chengdu cyber volunteer team might help the government to screen public criticism against some public policies, and it may eventually become a public opinion killer.

Early in May, local residents in Chengdu began to publish posts discussing the environmental impact that could be caused by a PetroChina project in nearby Pengzhou that would produce suspected carcinogen paraxylene (PX) as a by-product. Online comments also protested the location of the petrochemical plant.

"The government should watch what they do in regard to guiding public opinion. Any inappropriate moves will result in hurting freedom of speech, and that might trigger wide criticism online in China," said Song Jianwu, dean of the School of Journalism and Media at the China University of Political Science and Law.

"Besides, it's hard to affect what people think by establishing such an official team. Internet communication is more private than traditional newspapers or radio. The team can't reply to all the opinions online, so the effect will be negligible," Song noted.