One of the first things I noticed about China was the spray paint. At first, it seemed like every wall was tagged. The tags were numbers, not names. I figured one tagger was responsible for all of them, and he was sequentially numbering his work. But when I did the math, I figured he would’ve had to do one a minute for…maybe…ten thousand years. Then, I guessed that the graffiti served as rudimentary postbox numbers. Perhaps addresses and mail delivery points were changing constantly in the rapid alteration of the cities, so it was a waste of time for citizens to install a proper mailbox. I guessed wrong.

The walls are tagged with cell phone numbers. Call those numbers and you’ve got access to any number of different goods and services, from taxi pickup to purchase of human organs. One of the most advertised services is for forged documents. An advertisement even made it into MI:III, the train wreck of a follow-up to MI:II. And the phone numbers don’t just receive messages; they send them, too. SMS text spam is endless.

These services are mostly illegal, but the cell phone numbers are anonymous and untraceable. When we bought our present cell service, there wasn’t a coverage plan choice or “friends and family” option. We just walked up to a sidewalk vendor at a rickety, card table and umbrella setup, picked one of a stack of dirty cardboard envelopes and handed the man 100 RMB. We’d just bought a pre-paid SIM card. We don’t get a monthly bill in the mail. When we want to put more money on our account, we can walk into any bank and give the teller some cash. She doesn’t ask for ID, just our number. She gives us a phone number to call which credits the money to our account. If we’re wary of banks, we could just as easily buy minutes from a convenience store. Say what you will about privacy in China; at least in terms of cell phones, China makes the US look like a panopticon overseen by Big Brother.

But that may soon change. The Ministry of Information Industry (MII) - not to be confused with the first Mission Impossible sequel, which was enough of a stinker to rightfully deserve the colon in the title - has announced the end of the anonymous SIM card.

Check out this article on it at RED HERRING.

Beyond just cleaning up the graffiti, the ramifications could be tremendous. But I doubt they will be. My first foray into registered cell service purchase in Jinzhou was unsuccessful because the clerk couldn’t enter an English name into the system. I didn’t yet have my Chinese name, so she suggested I use hers instead. I declined, but I just as easily could’ve accepted her offer. And no one is more anonymous than a middle-aged, cell phone clerk in a small town in northern China.