To blog or not to blog is a question currently faced by many people in mainland China. The government has been cracking down on internet-based discussion forums, and private bloggers are the latest group to be included on the monitored list.

New rules require all bloggers to register with the government the true name of the site author by June 30 or face their blog being shut down. Web crawlers will be deployed to seek and block unregistered sites. Financial penalties for non-compliance are prohibitive – up to RMB$1m ($121,000). Internet service providers will also be held liable for providing hosting services to banned sites.