Reading Reflection
According to the article “The Internet police in China: regulation, scope and myths” wrote by Xiaoyan Chen and Peng Hwa Ang, the authors focused on the analysis of the Chinese Internet censorship and the role of the internet police in China. With the emergence and the development of the Internet, the number of Internet users grew rapidly in China and reached 384 million in 2009, which is larger than the US Internet users. In order to keep the Internet community in order, the Chinese government has put a lot of effort to regulate and control the online space. The Internet police was one of the efforts that the Chinese government has been made to regulate and manage the Internet (Chen& Ang, 2011).
The public Information and Internet Security Supervision Bureau (PIISS) was set up in 1998, which intended as an online police unit to manage cyber space. This bureau was established at provincial, prefecture and county levels, which contains around 20000 Internet police everywhere in Mainland China (Chen& Ang, 2011). “Internet police work can be understood as supervision of the safety of the computer network and Internet systems, administrative regulation on Internet activities and detection of computer and Internet crimes” (Chen& Ang, 2011, P. 42). For example, to detect and prevent the transmission of the computer viruses, and to protect the security of the important computer information systems are within the scope of the supervision of the Internet police. Meanwhile, the Internet police has empowered after the public security administration punishments enacted in 2006. Their responsibility was extended to deal with the misbehavior that might happen to impact social orders. The empowerment of the Internet police made a permanent excuse for further monitoring of the people’s online activities.
As a fresh and pervasive used medium in China, the government soon realized the great impact of the Internet, at the same time; more rules and regulations were enacted for managing content on the Internet. Particularly, the 11 types of content include sedition, discrimination, defamation, pornography and violence were strictly restricted (Chen& Ang, 2011). The Internet police is not only function on the cyber space, but also extended to Internet café, which is wangba in Chinese. They need to insure the security of the environment, technical and online information in the Internet café (Chen& Ang, 2011). With the increasing number of the Internet users, more and more crimes committed through the computer and online system, which brought the security condition of the Internet to public attention. In order to effective regulate and control computer related crimes, specific crime offences and punishments were clarified in the 1997 Criminal Law. For all kinds of Internet crimes, the Internet police should be responsible for the investigating the crime and then cooperating with the conventional police to bring criminals to justice (Chen& Ang, 2011).
This article identified few reasons for the existence of the Internet police in China. Based on the article, the Internet police firstly function as a detector to discover every potential problem on the Internet. Then they play their police role to address the problem and bring back the harmony to the netizens. From my perspectives, if there was no Internet police to regulate net system and environment, the Internet would become a place where was full of rampant lawlessness and crime. A recent example would be the case of Manzi Xue and Liangjie Dong. These two people are well known in the Chinese twitter-weibo and both of them are successful in their field. However, they were both arrested for committing the crime of deliberately producing and spreading rumours and disrupts the social order. In order to promote the water purifier made by his own company, Liangjie Dong deliberate creates and disseminates several appalling articles such as “ there is contraceptive pill in the water” and “the hair of Zhoushan residents contain elevated mercury level”. With the title of “ environmentalist” in weibo, Liangjie Dong got connected with another weibo celebrity Manzi Xue who made use of his popularity to retweet those distorts facts fabricated by Liangjie Dong to other netizens.(Jinghua Newspaper, 2003) These two people utilize their prestige as successful and professional men to deceive netizens and get profit from it. However, thanks to the hard work of the Internet police, the truth was exposed quickly. In the context of Chinese politics, many people claim that the existence of the Internet police is against the people’s right of free speech. In fact, I think these two do not conflict with each other at all because having a good and pure net environment is the precondition for the free speech rather than being a block. People will always have free speech rights if their behaviors are within the scope of the law and not against other people’s right.

Reference
Chen, X.Y , & Ang, P. H. (2011). The Internet police in China: regulation, scope and myths. Herold, D. K,& Marolt, P. Online Society in China(p42-52). USA, Canada: Routledge
Jinghua Newspaper.(2013, Sep29). Xujia xinxi beihoude konghuangyingxiaoshu. Retrieved Oct 1, 2013, from http://brand.cnad.com/html/Article/2013/0929/20130929102530577.shtml