ABSTRACT
From 2007 to 2010, China added more Internet users than there are people in the United States (US). This high growth, in combination with a low saturation level, makes China the most promising market in the world for companies that want to provide Internet services. However, China has restricted foreign social media, 1 including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, by either blocking the sites or making access so erratic or slow that discouraged Internet users shun them. A publication of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) explained the ban of Facebook 2 by pointing out that after the deadly riots in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the Xinjiang independence movement 3 used Facebook as a medium.
* This chapter is part of the results of the Research Project on “ Current Trends of Chinese Law towards NonTrade Concerns such as Sustainable Development and the Protection of Environment, Public Health, Food Safety, Cultural, Social and Economic Rights, Labor Rights and the Reduction of Poverty from the Perspective of International Law and WTO Law ” coordinated by Professor Paolo Davide Farah at gLAWcal – Global Law Initiatives for Sustainable Development (United Kingdom) and at West Virginia University John D. Rockefeller IV School of Policy and Politics, Department of Public Administration, in partnership with the Center of Advanced Studies on Contemporary China (CASCC) in Turin (Italy), Maastricht University Faculty of Law, Department of International and European Law and IGIR – Institute for Globalisation and International Regulation (Netherlands), and Tsinghua University, School of Law, Institute of Public International Law and the Center for Research on Intellectual Property Law in Beijing (China). An early draft of this chapter was presented at the Conferences Series on “ China’s Infl uence on Non-Trade Concerns in International Economic Law ”, Third Conference held at Maastricht University, Faculty of Law on January 19-20, 2012. This publication and the Conference Series were sponsored by China-EU School of Law (CESL) at the China University of Political Science and Law (CUPL). The activities of CESL at CUPL are supported by the European Union and the People’s Republic of China.
