Expected Reading Comprehension Questions for SBI PO/ Clerk 2018 | Set – 61

Directions:(1-10) Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below it. Certain words are given in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions. 

The People’s Republic of China entered the Internet age in 1994; 23 years on, China is considered to have the largest online population worldwide, with 731 million active users. At the same time, China has one of the world’s strictest online legal frameworks. One could easily assume that an online ecosphere as vibrant and active as China’s would lead to many differentiated approaches to interpreting Chinese Internet law. Instead, China researchers, legal scholars, and observers of the Chinese internet industry have engaged in ever-repeating, entrenched, and constricted narratives focused on human rights abuses, censorship, and political oppression. Simultaneously and largely unnoticed, China has devised a strategy of innovation security as part of its internet law. The narrative of a monolithic and repressive regime in Beijing is tempting. It is an easy approach to the Chinese internet and has a long history. None of the global social media and Web 2.0 market leaders – Twitter, Facebook, YouTube – are available on the Chinese internet, and Chinese users search the web with Baidu, rather than Google. The “Great Firewall of China” is therefore a beguiling and easy to memorize catchphrase, and also somewhat accurate.
However, the term is also evaluative rather than merely a description of the conditions on the Chinese internet. What lies within the confines of this “Great Firewall” is a question that remains unanswered. Clearly, the implication is that the Chinese internet user base is disconnected from the world. Undoubtedly, social media and Web 2.0 in China and the rest of the world have developed dichotomously. Outside of China, a handful of U.S. companies maintain firm control over the market. Within China, a growing number of domestic substitutes have created a market for themselves. And rather than restricting themselves to their home market, WeChat, SinaWeibo, and YoukuTudou have begun to compete for international market share. Hence, the first important realization is that the absence of Western Web 2.0 and social media online services does not mean the absence of sustainable internet enterprises within the “Great Firewall.” This realization should be followed by questioning the role of Chinese internet law in the evolution of Chinese internet giants.
China has a comprehensive legal framework of internet regulation. Since the passing of the “Interim Regulations on the Management of International Networking of Computer Information” in 1996, China has enacted more than 13 statutes and regulations directly concerned with the management of the internet. A material analysis of the body of Chinese internet law indicates the positioning of platforms before content as the main regulation subject beginning sometime in the early 2000s. To fully appreciate this repositioning, one ought to revisit the fundamental difference between the Web 2.0 and pre-Web 2.0/social media eras. Before the emergence of Web 2.0, the internet was one-directional and read-only.
In other words, a limited number of providers would produce content for a great number of consumers. This was also true in China, and accordingly authorities focused on controlling content. For instance, the “Decision on Safeguarding Internet Security” of 2000 mandates criminal prosecution of online activities endangering national security, undermining the position of the government, eroding national unity, and promoting religious cult organizations. Around the same time, the government also enacted the “Telecommunications Regulations” in 2000, and thereby created the Internet Content Provider (ICP) license scheme. The scheme requires content producers – generally websites – to file their information with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). Offending content would ultimately lead to a revocation of the ICP license, rendering the website inaccessible from within China.
A first noticeable repositioning toward the regulation of platforms was the introduction of industry self-regulation with the “Public Pledge on Self-Discipline for the Chinese Internet Industry” in 2004. At a time when social media was slowly emerging, the term Web 2.0 had just been defined, and the way in which online content was produced, shared, and consumed experienced revolutionary changes, self-regulation implied an acknowledgement that direct content management by the government could no longer effectively yield the desired effects. Such an approach becomes impractical when every user is equally and simultaneously a potential content producer. Therefore, legislation from 2004 on, such as the “Provisional Provisions for Administrating the Development of Public Information Services on Instant Messaging Tool,” primarily regulate platforms, rather than content. This is not to argue that filtering of content sensitive to the Chinese government no longer occurs, but rather that in the case of domestic platforms, government is no longer choosing a path of straight escalation toward the tip of the enforcement pyramid. Rather, authorities employ a responsive enforcement strategy of enforced self-regulation.