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Beijing, China — China on Monday took another draconian step toward the censorship of independent views by banning all private websites. Under new regulations, no one can register a domain name without presenting a business license or a license from a government-approved organization.

Existing websites will be reviewed and could also be closed. By Tuesday, website owners in at least five mainland provinces could no longer access them.

Although the authorities justified their move by saying they were cleaning up pornography, many analysts believe this is just the latest step in an ongoing crackdown on the dissemination of “sensitive information” and dissenting views.

The announcement comes just days after Chinese activists marked Human Rights Day on Dec. 10 and the first anniversary of the online publication of Charter 08, a document initiated and signed by academics, lawyers, writers and ordinary people who called for the Chinese authorities to launch democratic reforms based on constitutionalism. The document calls for greater freedom of expression, democratic elections and independent courts, among other things.

Initially, 303 people signed Charter 08; the number has now surpassed 10,000 as people added their signatures through the Internet. Authorities deleted the term “Charter 08” from search engines, but Chinese netizens found ways to get around that by using homonyms to identify it. However, signature campaigns like this will become more difficult, if not impossible, under the new Internet rules.

Supporters consider the document’s recommendations reasonable and in accordance with China’s existing laws. Many signers were surprised that the authorities clearly felt Charter 08 crossed the invisible line of acceptable criticism.

“Charter 08 is nothing more than a democratic appeal based on the Chinese Constitution,” stated Bao Tong, who was secretary to Zhao Ziyang, the late former Communist Party general secretary who supported the 1989 pro-democracy movement.

Perry Link, the professor at Princeton University in New Jersey who translated Charter 08 into English, pointed out that the document was inspired by Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, but also reflected ideas from several other human rights and democratic declarations.

Yet Chinese authorities marked Human Rights Day 2009 by officially charging the document’s main drafter, Liu Xiaobo, with “inciting subversion,” one year after detaining him. Liu, a renowned writer and president of the Chinese Independent PEN Center, was secretly taken away by national security officers two days before Charter 08 was published online. He was officially arrested six months later, in late June of 2008.

Liu’s lawyers were informed of the charge against him just two days before it was announced, and were not allowed to meet with their client, said Mo Shaoping, a renowned human rights lawyer and head of the law firm that is handling Liu’s case. Authorities refused to allow Mo to defend Liu on the grounds that he was himself among the signers of Charter 08.

In addition to Charter 08, six other articles written by Liu were listed as evidence supporting the charge of inciting subversion against state power, Mo said. Stating that all 19 suggestions addressed in Charter 08 constituted Liu’s “crime” was very unwise, Mo said; perhaps this leaves room for the defense as some of the points merely call for the implementation of current laws.

If Liu is found guilty he could be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison. Others who signed the document could also be prosecuted. Many of them have been questioned or threatened by police, but so far only Liu has been charged.

But rather than stepping back, many Chinese intellectuals have bravely declared that they will stand with Liu. In fact, 165 of the original signers of the document issued an open letter last week stating that they were willing to share responsibility with Liu Xiaobo. This too has been widely circulated on the Internet.

Perhaps it is this bold attitude that has made Chinese authorities increasingly nervous and fearful of the power of the Internet. They have already banned sites with user-generated content such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter as well as their Chinese-language counterparts. Banning all private websites just puts one more nail in the coffin of free expression.