China Economic Weekly reporter Zhang Yuxuan reports from Beijing.
On January 1, 2024, the Regulations on the Protection of Minors Online (hereinafter referred to as the "Regulations") came into force.
This is China's first specialized comprehensive legislation for the protection of minors online, marking a new step in China's construction of online protection for minors.
The regulations start from a multi-faceted approach to ensure the safety of minors "touching the Internet".
One of the backgrounds of the promulgation of this regulation is that the number of underage Internet users in China has been growing in the past period. At the same time, the number of cases of using the Internet to commit crimes against minors, illegal use of the Internet by minors, and leakage of personal information of underage netizens remains high.
According to statistics, as of June 2023, the scale of China's netizens has reached 107.9 billion, of which the number of underage Internet users exceeded 19.1 billion, which is close to 20% of the total number of Internet users.
During this period, with the increasing popularity of online communication, online games, short **, and online dating among minors, it was accompanied by online fraud, online violence, school bullying and sexual crimes that targeted or used underage netizens to carry out frequent reports.
Prior to the promulgation of the Regulations, according to the statistics released by the Supreme People's Procuratorate in May 2023, from 2020 to 2022, the procuratorate prosecuted a total of 7,761 people suspected of using telecommunications networks to commit crimes against minors, prosecuted 7,221 minors suspected of using telecommunications networks to commit crimes, and filed and handled a total of 341 public interest litigation cases involving minors' online rights and interests and personal information protection.
The regulations provide specific legislative norms in terms of the promotion of online literacy, the regulation of online information content, the protection of personal information networks, the prevention and control of online addiction, and legal liability. Its formal implementation will certainly deter and crack down on the above-mentioned types of crimes.
The general provisions of the Regulations make it clear that the State Internet Information Department is responsible for the overall planning and coordination of efforts to protect minors online, and is to do a good job of efforts to protect minors online on the basis of their duties. The national departments of press and publication, film, and relevant departments such as for education, telecommunications, public security, and civil affairs are to complete efforts to protect minors online on the basis of their respective duties. At the same time, schools and family education are required to guide minors to participate in activities that are beneficial to their physical and mental health, to use the Internet scientifically, civilly, safely, and reasonably, and to prevent and intervene in minors' addiction to the Internet.
At the same time, it is provided that providers of network products and services, personal information processors, and manufacturers and sellers of smart terminal products shall comply with laws, administrative regulations, and relevant state provisions, and perform obligations to protect minors online; shall accept ** and societal oversight, and cooperate with relevant departments in lawfully carrying out oversight and inspections involving efforts on the protection of minors online. In addition, the news shall conduct oversight of violations of the lawful rights and interests of minors, and guide the entire society to participate in the protection of minors online.
A number of provisions in the regulations are specific to serious crimes such as "air clearance".
It is worth noting that the regulations strictly regulate the content of online information that minors are exposed to, such as: no organization or individual may produce, reproduce, publish, or disseminate online information that contains content that endangers the physical and mental health of minors, such as publicity, pornography, violence, and gambling; No organization or individual may produce, reproduce, publish, disseminate, or possess pornographic online information about minors; Minors must not be sent, pushed, enticed, or compelled by any organization or individual to contact online information that contains content that is harmful or might impact minors' physical and psychological health.
These provisions are more in line with the "air-wide" criminal acts that the public procuratorate and law organs focus on and crack down. The so-called "air" refers to the perpetrator's use of the Internet as a medium for the purpose of satisfying sexual stimulation, and luring and coercing minors to carry out illegal and criminal acts such as "** or sending" under the guise of "personal friends" and "recruiting child stars".
According to the relevant person in charge of the Taizhou Municipal Procuratorate of Jiangsu Province combined with a number of cases to analyze to China Economic Weekly, this type of criminal behavior has the following characteristics:
1. Hide your identity and gain trust to lure you into the trap step by step. In social software, game communities and other online gathering places, criminals purposefully seek out young girls as targets, take advantage of online loopholes that are easy to hide their true identities, and build trust with victims by impersonating women, lying about their age, etc., and then using minors' sexual curiosity to lure victims to shoot and exchange**. Second, small profits lure, weaving traps to lure girls to be deceived. At present, online games are popular among minors, especially many mobile games, which are deeply loved by students, and some are even addicted to them and can't extricate themselves. Beautifully designed props in online games need to be paid for, and many minors are discouraged by "shyness". Criminals take advantage of this to lure victims into falling for it through small profits. 3. Coercion and coercion, and the crime of controlling and controlling handles has gradually escalated. Minors lack full awareness of the complexity of cyberspace, and are easy to fall into the trap when seeking intimate topics from strangers who think they will not intersect, especially once they provide true information and private parts to criminals, it is easy to become a "handle" for their mind control, leading to the continuation and even escalation of crime. Fourth, the self-protection ability is weak, and the failure to seek help in time after the incident. Among the 14 "air-splitting" cases handled by the Taizhou Municipal Procuratorate, none of them were reported by the victims after being deceived, and many minor victims did not seek help from their families and teachers in the first place due to their limited knowledge, resulting in continued violations. Fifth, the delay in the occurrence of cases has made privacy protection the biggest problem. Due to the untimely occurrence of the case, the victim's privacy is continuously possessed by criminals, and some are used to upload illegal platforms for profit or exchange and share in illegal groups, which leads to the illegal dissemination of minor victims in an uncontrollable state, and it is difficult to completely eliminate the impact, which has also become the biggest concern of many victims' parents.
The gradual improvement of the legislative and judicial processes is forming a "protection net" for minors
Serious cyber crimes such as the above-mentioned targeting minors have long attracted great attention from relevant departments, and they have been focused on rectification.
Previously, the Supreme People's Procuratorate issued Guiding Cases on issues such as the coercion of girls*** through online chat, establishing the principle that conduct without physical contact** is equivalent to offline crimes, and has prosecuted more than 3,000 people for crimes by October 2023. In response to phenomena such as the use of the Internet to infringe on the physical and mental health of minors, the Supreme People's Procuratorate has also formulated and issued the "No. 6 Procuratorial Recommendation" to urge relevant departments to advance comprehensive management.
In addition, the Supreme People's Court and the Supreme People's Procuratorate issued the "Interpretation on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law in the Handling of ** and Juvenile Criminal Cases", which will be implemented on June 1, 2023, which clarifies that coercing or enticing minors to expose their private parts of their bodies or carry out ** acts through online chat or sending**, etc., and complies with the relevant provisions of the Criminal Law, shall be convicted and punished as the crime of compulsory ** or ** children.
The formal implementation of the "Regulations on the Protection of Minors Online" together with the appellate procuratorial suggestions and judicial interpretations form a "protection network", forming an effective legal guarantee for the legitimate rights of minors on the Internet.
Editor-in-charge: Yang Lin.