New Chinese regulations aimed at dramatically restricting the publication of foreign internet content have introduced a new chill into an already frigid press environment in China.

The directives, which entered force last week, give China’s government draconian powers to stop foreign companies or partly foreign-owned companies from publishing online material unless they have approval from the broadcast regulator — the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television.

The new rules apply to words, pictures, maps, games, animation and sound of an “informational and thoughtful nature”.

However, experts say there is a possibility nothing may change. The directives formalise long-held powers the government has rarely hesitated to use in practice: the ability to block online content. None of the foreign publishers and foreign chambers of commerce in Beijing that have spoken to the Financial Times has been asked to apply to Sarft for permission.

Industry analysts say the rules fit a new pattern: whereas formerly the government’s press censorship was widely denied and hidden from view, today the government is making its powers and the limits of dissent more explicit and public.

“Under [Chinese President] Xi Jinping we have been seeing a much more explicit approach to control” said David Bandurski, a researcher at the University of Hong Kong’s China Media Project. “It’s as though they are not interested in hiding or explaining or rationalising censorship. They are in effect saying, ‘look, this is not allowed, period’.”

Long surrounded by internet blocking apparatus known as the Great Firewall, China’s internet is carefully filtered to be free of dissenting views. To view many foreign news sites users in China must already install software known as virtual private networks, or VPNs, and many of these have begun to be blocked as well.

Despite a well publicised trip to China by Mark Zuckerberg last weekend, Facebook remains blocked, as does Google, Twitter and YouTube.

Meanwhile, a series of local censorship skirmishes erupted this month during the National People’s Congress, the annual meeting of the rubber-stamp legislature, which is traditionally an especially sensitive time for the press.

On March 7 Hong Kong daily the South China Morning Post was blocked in mainland China following a critical editorial and while it is now viewable, its feed on Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, remains blocked.

China’s widely respected financial journal Caixin also had a run-in with censors this month. In an article published May 8 on its English-language website, it said censors had deleted a Chinese-language interview on the issue of free speech. But by the following day the English article appeared to have been deleted as well.

“It’s a very tight and continuing to tighten atmosphere for the press in China,” said Mr Bandurski.