Using Legal Means to Guarantee and Promote Sound Development of Information NetworkThe fact that central leading comrades listen to a legal system lecture on the use of legal means to guarantee and promote the healthy development of information network fully shows the high attention paid by the Party Central Committee and the State Council to the sound development of the State's information network and their determination to implement the strategy for administering the country according to law.In today's world, the high-speed development of information technology (IT) has brought human society into the age of information. The increasingly frequent exchanges among the people, the rapid increase of the information volume, the steady acceleration of the updating of knowledge have brought about profound changes in such aspects as people's habits and customs, working styles, mode of thinking and concepts of value; meanwhile, they have generated extensive and far-reaching influence in various fields of social life. The degree of the development of information networking technology has become an important yardstick for measuring a country's modernization level and its comprehensive national strength. Materialist dialectics tells us that the advantage and disadvantage, and the existence and non-existence of anything are promoting and complementing each other. While the development of information technology as well as information network has boosted economic growth and social progress and brought enormous conveniences for people's daily lives, it has also provided conditions for the production and dissemination of various kinds of harmful information as well as various other kinds of network-related criminal behaviors. Given this situation, the State must give necessary guidance to and management over information networking activities, and must not in the least lull and slack off. The requirement set by General Secretary of the Party Central Committee Jiang Zemin, to the effect that "actively developing (IT), strengthening management, pursuing benefits while avoiding detriment, making it serve China, striving to hold an initiative position in the development of global information network", constitutes an important guideline for guaranteeing the sound development of China's information network. We should conscientiously implement this requirement, engage in intensive studies of the information networking characteristics and laws, turn pressure into power and challenges into opportunities, bring our late starting superiority into play and strive to bring about a leaping development in our information industry. The Outline of the 10th Five-year Plan has clearly drawn a magnificent blueprint for the development of China's information network. Fulfillment of this historical mission not only requires the support of high and new technologies, but also urgently needs the guarantee of a complete legal system. Covering a wide-ranging social ties, information network not only becomes an important component of social life, but also links itself closely with the State's politics, economy and military, the international struggle carried out around information network has become a "smokeless war". We must make full use of the legal means to conduct comprehensive adjustment and regulation of it, adopt practical measures to strengthen guidance to and management over information network, while energetically expediting the sound development of information network, we should reduce the negative influence of information network to the minimum. Using legal means to guarantee and promote the healthy development of information network is an important new subject. On the one hand, we should, proceeding from China's actual conditions, pay attention to drawing on the world's effective experiences and methods to complete information networking legislation, strengthen enforcement of law and administration of justice, legally attack networking criminal offences and construct a good order featuring the rule of law. In recent years, China has published a host of laws, statutes and administrative rules and regulations, and has thus taken an important step in legally strengthening management. In the future, we should further strengthen work in this regard. We should consider not only the enactment of prohibitive and managerial laws and regulations, but also formulation of some encouraging and promotional laws and regulations, so as to constantly meet the needs of the development of information network. On the other hand, we should earnestly implement the fourth five-year plan for the popularization of laws, firmly establish strategic awareness, security awareness and lawful awareness of information network among the people of the whole country, vigorously promote socialist moral standard, create a sound social foundation for the orderly development of information network and promote the healthy development of China's information network. This article, written by a People's Daily commentator, is published on the front page on July 12. |
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