Following Shanghai’s recent move ordering Sina Weibo — China’s Twitter equivalent — to have users report their real names to keep better tabs on them, China’s Tencent has announced that they will not ask users of their QQ social network to provide their real names.  The announcement came from Chief Executive Pony Ma and is in opposition to many real-name policies being activated across China.

The Chinese government is attempting to get the Chinese networks to demand their users to provide their real names out of fear of criminal activity on the networks.  This is no doubt a bit late for the government, but seeing protests in the Middle East likely woke them up to the reality of the power of social networks.  Fortunately, some of the social networks seem to be holding out.

Bloomberg reports that: ‘Faced with questions at the Municipal People’s Congress about criminal activity conducted over QQ, Ma said: “If there are people now using the telephone to conduct prostitution, is it the responsibility of telecommunications operators to change that behavior?”‘

The big question is what the government will do with real names; will it really be all about criminal activity or will this be a way to censor people’s views under threat of punishment?  We’ll keep an eye on the situation as it develops.