National People's Congress will enhance the Chinese government's control over the Internet

In fact, the Chinese government already has defacto control over everything online. Sixteen years ago, as the Internet rose in prominence in China, Web portals like Sohu.com and Netease.com had their offices routinely visited by government officials intent on censoring the Internet. And today, the oversight has grown with the rise of social media and Weibo.com and WeChat being routinely censored and controlled.

All Web servers in China must also be licensed and housed at approved Internet Service Provider locations, which provides Chinese government agencies with management abilities of all netizen activity. And foreign companies are still not allowed to participate fully or easily in many technology-related sectors such as cloud computing hosting, Internet advertising sales, and Internet gaming.