COMMON PRACTICE

China is not the only country to resort to real-name registration to monitor the Internet.

The government of the Republic of Korea started to implement a real-name authentication system on its major websites in 2007 to prevent Internet violence, fraud or malicious information spreading.

In 2009, the system was expanded to cover all websites with daily visits of over 100,000.

A commentary published in Monday's edition of the People's Daily said microblogs are an important public opinion outlet and play a positive role in promoting democracy.

The new rules won't affect people's expression of opinions, even critical ones, but will prevent a handful of people with ill-purposes from posting malicious speech using different IDs, the commentary said.