If I were living in China, I would probably be out of a job. The New York Times just reported that China is once again cracking down on the entertainment and blogging industries.

The reason for the crackdown on is fairly obvious; China appears to be worried that the spread of political uprisings throughout the world and promoted through social media might have a domino-like effect and spread to China as well. The television entertainment industry was the largest to be hit by the Communist government, who has just ordered all of the Chinese television stations to limit the number of broadcasts.

From the New York Times:

34 major satellite television stations to limit themselves to no more than two 90-minute entertainment shows each per week, and collectively 10 nationwide. They are also being ordered to broadcast two hours of state-approved news every evening and to disregard audience ratings in their programming decisions.

In addition to the limits on television broadcasts, the Chinese Communist government has also recently placed limits on the use of a social media called weibos that sound more similar to Twitter than to an actual blog or Facebook. Again, the reasons for the Chinese governments’ actions are fairly easy to guess; the social networking sites’ members have exposed several flaws and coverups within China, one of which was the Chinese governments’ attempt to hide the details of a high-speed railway accident from the Chinese public.

The Chinese government is looking towards enacting a system for controlling the use of the Internet by the general public and would like strict punishments for those who choose to share “harmful information” on the Internet. One way that the Chinese government would like to do this is by requiring Internet users on certain social networking sites to register by name. 

Other provisions that are already in place to control information that the Chinese government does not want spread on the Internet include the use of a “rumor refutal” department that monitors information on certain topics deemed harmful to the Chinese government.

The restrictions on the entertainment industry and the Internet in China are not new. The latest seem to come from straight from the top as the government strives to keep any potential rebellions form happening before they start.

In a way, the censorship now in China seems to reflect some of the censorship that happened in China during the period of the Cultural Revolution; the problem that China faces now is that although the Internet can be shut down, it is much more difficult to stop the spread of information in the digital age. Quelling intellectual thought and freedom is now next to impossible, even in China.