A Reckoning for Weibo？.docVIP

A Reckoning for Weibo？ 　　It’s 10 p.m. in a bar near the Chaoyang Park area of Beijing. Two Chinese friends are discussing shimingzhi (实名制, real-name registration), the impending regulation that will require users of all China’s major microblog services to register with their real names and identification details. 　　“I won’t stop using microblogs after shimingzhi because they’re already an important part of my life,” says Dongyue, a Beijing-based diamond saleswoman.“I use Weibo because it’s like a window into a library―you just never know which books will open or the knowledge they will contain. It’s also a way I can make sure my opinions are heard, so I can represent myself rather than let others speak in my name.” 　　“Yeah?” responds Ray Zhao, a 37-year-old public relations professional.“There’ll be no point after shimingzhi; no one will have anything interesting to say, or those who do will be too cautious to post it. Weibo’s heyday is over.” 　　Conversations like this have been served up in bars and online forums all over China since December of last year, when the Beijing government released its“Regulations for the Development and Management of Microblogs in Beijing.”The upshot was that in three months, users of most Chinese microblogs would have to submit their real names and ID numbers. While they will still be able to post under nicknames, the microblog host companies will have access to their real registration data. This will affect all the major microblog hosts, including Sina, NetEase, Sohu and Tencent, encompassing more than 500 million microbloggers. 　　On February 7, 2012, a last warning was issued to users who had so far turned a deaf ear to the new rules or hoped their implementation might be postponed indefinitely. March 16 was set as the deadline, after which microblog users who hadn’t registered with their real names would not be able to post new messages. They’d still be able to sign in, but would only be allowed to browse other people’s posts.