1 October

If you comment on Chinese platforms from outside mainland China, your account still has to be tied to a real identity. Since April 2022, Douban has required overseas users to bind a mainland Chinese phone number or provide identity documents. The Provisions on the Administration of Internet Comment Services took effect on 1 October 2017. They required platforms to match each account to a real identity while users could post under a nickname, a principle the rules called "real names in the back end, voluntary in the front end", and a revised version in December 2022 named phone numbers and ID numbers as the means of verification. Since July 2025, measures issued by the Ministry of Public Security, the Cyberspace Administration of China and four other agencies have let users verify with a state-issued network number and network certificate, and unless laws provide otherwise or the user agrees, platforms may not then ask them for identity details in plain text. The same measures require the state verification platform to provide the real identity behind a network number, with its authentication logs, when the law requires assistance. Readers who do not use Chinese platforms are not affected by these rules.