has closed down 1,250 websites in its latest crackdown on online
pornography but still faces an uphill task in regulating the unwieldy
Internet for vulgar content, an official said Friday. Liu Zhengrong,
deputy director of the Cabinet’s Internet Affairs Bureau, said
authorities have also arrested 41 people in the month-long campaign
that began Jan. 5. “We have made apparent achievements but it’s only
for this phase,” Liu told reporters. “We still have a lot of work to
do.” Earlier this month, authorities warned Google, Baidu, Sina and
Sohu — China’s most heavily used sites — that they had to do more to
block pornographic material from reaching Chinese users. The moves are
part of a continuing government campaign against using the Internet to
access pornography, which is banned in China.
However, it remains widely available off and on
the Internet, where popular Web portals frequently show sexually
explicit pictures and provide links to pornographic sites. China’s
population of Internet users is expanding at explosive rates and has
risen to 298 million after passing the United States last year to
become the world’s largest. On average, there are 240,000 new Chinese
users and 3,000 new sites daily, Liu said. “Our biggest challenge is
that the Internet is still growing,” he said. “We are facing a
long-term, complex and huge task.” While the current crackdown is
focused on lewd material, it is part of a larger effort to control
freedom of expression and root out material the leadership considers
socially destabilizing, such as sites that criticize the Communist
Party, promote democratic reform or advocate Taiwan independence.
Authorities loosened some media and Internet controls during last
year’s Beijing Olympics — gestures that were meant to show the
international community that the games had brought greater freedom to
the Chinese people.
Source: USA Today
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