With thriving blogging and podcasting activities in the Chinese cyber world in recent years, the authorities are considering regulatory rules to ensure their healthy and fast growth.

Long Xinmin, director of China's General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP), revealed in Beijing March 12 that his administration, together with several other departments, is working on the new rules on Internet publishing activities, but gave no timeframe as to when the rules would be announced and enforced.

A wedding photo of two Chinese bloggers. Blogging has thrived in China in the past two years, while legislation on blog administration has lagged behind. (file)

Long, speaking as a Beijing deputy on the sidelines of the ongoing session of the National People's Congress, said the rules will help guarantee the freedom of speech for all netizens while regulating and standardizing the publishing activities.

Blogging has been a new growth area in China's information technology industry in the past two years, driven by a fast-increasing population of netizens and the so-called grass-roots society wake-up.

However, legislation lagged behind in maintaining the order of the cyber world. Two infamous lawsuits in 2006, in which bloggers accused service providers for failing in removing abusive words of other bloggers towards them, raised speculations of how to protect web users' interests in the meantime ensuring their rights of free speech.

"We aim to maintain the healthy and easiest environment of web publishing on the premise of netizen's freedom of expression being fully fulfilled," Long said, adding that the rapid expansion of Internet use, especially the blogging and podcasting differing from traditional media, poses great pressure on the administrators.

Providing China's 137 million web users with a free and easy way of publishing text and multi-media messages, blogging and podcasting, which don't require cutting-edge technologies, are also used by those with commercial purposes as a platform to publicize false and pornography information.

The prevalence of blogs also helped with the popularization of online spoofs. Sister Furong, as she named herself on the Internet, was well known for posing like the letter 'S' in photos and dancing while shaking her portly body. Mu Zimei showed off her thin figure and recorded her numerous romances with men on her weblog, with audio clips recorded while making love.