Wai Ling Yeung

China is quietly rewriting its most important social media regulation — and the implications go far beyond China. The CAC has released draft revisions to China’s 26-year-old Administrative Measures on Internet Information Services, the core regulation underpinning its censorship regime. Much of the new draft simply reproduces the familiar blacklist of prohibited content: anything deemed contrary to the Constitution, critical of the socialist system, threatening state power, disrupting social order, spreading rumors, inciting ethnic tensions, promoting obscenity, gambling, violence, terrorism, defamation, or harming state interests — categories I discussed extensively in my 2021 paper "Data Regulation with Chinese Characteristics". But two changes are especially striking: 1. From platform liability to user liability The 2000 regulation targeted internet service providers. The new draft explicitly extends liability to individual users who create or share prohibited content. 2. China’s censorship law is going global The biggest change is Article 29, which states that foreign organizations or individuals who create, publish, or disseminate prohibited content outside China, if deemed harmful to China’s national security or public interests, can face “necessary measures” under Chinese law. In plain English: China is formally claiming the right to enforce its censorship rules beyond its borders. That means even posts on X or Facebook — platforms banned inside China — could theoretically trigger legal consequences if you later enter China. China’s Great Firewall was never meant to stop at China’s borders. Now Beijing is making that explicit. Want to find out more about Data Regulation with Chinese Characteristics? Read my paper at cambridge.org/core/books/big…