China Opens Internet Legal Management Center

China's first professional academic institution that focuses on the systematic and theoretical research of Internet management and information society law has been started at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.

According to Li Yuxiao, director of the Internet Management and Law Research Center, based on an open platform, the institution will organize Chinese and foreign experts and scholars to implement basic, systematic, and theoretical research on Internet management and information society law. The specific research directions will cover Internet management; network law and information security; telecom legal systems; intellectual property rights and copyright protection; Internet crime; and implementation of legal systems for electronic data authentication.

The research results of this institution are expected to provide support to Chinese legislation in fields such as Internet intellectual property rights, Internet copyright, and e-commerce.

The number of Chinese netizens has reached 338 million and they scan information from over 16 billion web pages of about three million websites in China. The popularization of the Internet and the extensive network information has brought convenience to the Chinese public, but has also caused problems in network security, information security, and network intellectual property rights protection.

Statistics from China Internet Network Information Center show that during the first half of 2009, about 195 million Chinese netizens were attacked by viruses and trojans and millions of netizens lost their accounts or passwords in Internet thefts. These network security problems led to a decline of people's trust in the Internet and only 29.2% of Chinese netizens said they believe transactions via the Internet are safe. This poor acceptance rate restricts the development of e-commerce and online payments in China.