China's State post bureau announced on Monday that it will start a nationwide campaign to crack down on illegal activities by enforcing real-name registration for senders.
Starting Monday, the campaign launched by the State Post Bureau of China (SPB), which manages both post offices and private delivery companies, will conduct inspections and implement new rules, in a crackdown that will run until March 2016.
The nation's new rules, which took effect on Sunday, require senders to present official ID, especially when sending from a public place, such as hotels or train stations. The rules also stipulate that packages should go through an X-ray machine for a security check.
China began to mull a real-name registration policy in the industry after parcels tainted with toxic chemicals killed a man in East China's Shandong Province and poisoned seven others in December 2013.
A staff member surnamed Chen working in a post office in Hohhot in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region told the Global Times that senders must take their original ID card to the post office, and showing a photo of their ID card is not acceptable.
"The couriers will scan and record your ID information. Senders don't need to worry about personal information being secure. There will be follow-up measures to guarantee the safety of senders' information. For instance, there will be specially-assigned personnel to keep and manage all this information," Chen said.
However, many Net users still expressed concern over the leak of personal information in real-name registration.
Zhu Hong, an associate professor at the Ningbo Institute of Technology under Zhejiang University, told the Global Times in a previous interview that whether the real-name registration system would hold back packages containing illegal or hazardous goods is not clear. "We can trace the senders now with phone numbers. Registering ID cards might only speed up the process a bit," Zhu said.
