China Raises a Virtual War Against Pornography

Virtually, 5,000 websites were shut down, 270 culprits detained, and more than 160,000 of harmful materials was seized in the one month long assault that China made on online pornography, as reported by state media.

"Despite a drastic drop, cyber porn is still a concern," Public-Security Vice Minister Zhang Xinfeng said this while calling for extra efforts for bringing the domestic cyber porn under control, and blocking its overseas sources. Shanghai Daily reported this on May 28, 2007.

By 15 May this year, authorities had removed above 90,000 online pornographic items, 70,000 statements on swindle, lottery, and illegal goods' sales.

In the meantime, during November last year, Chinese police snapped the country's biggest porn site and held its creator Chen Hui. Hui was sentenced for life. Chen's website contained above nine million porn articles and images, and had above 600,000 subscribers.

As of March '07, there were 144 million web users in China and they are growing by 8% annually. Chinese authorities are highly concerned about the amount of porn content available to its web users. The Government of China believes that they need protection against negative online influences.

To provide the youngsters with a clean cyber space, the Public Security Ministry along with nine other govt. depts. launched a 6 month campaign for cracking down on Internet activities like distributing porn contents and organizing online strip shows. The ministry plans to encourage anti porn filers' development, regulate Web Data Centers, and provide people with incentives for reporting cyber porn with the police, as per Zhang Xinfeng.

In this regard, the ministry has also planning to regulate the campus web services, as per Li Weihong - the Vice Minister for Education. China Daily published Weihong's statement on May 29, 2007.

The minister continued that the govt. had plans to deploy additional "virtual cops" for monitoring and wiping out cyber porn. So far, the experiment was restricted to only nine cities however the ministry intended to expand it further to 100 cities.

Related article: China’s Best Initiatives To Deal With Spam

» SPAMfighter News - 6/6/2007