CHINA:China is stepping up its campaign to stamp out online smut. The ministry of public security has joined forces with nine other government departments for a major crackdown on internet pornography, saying it had "contaminated cyberspace and perverted China's young minds". The clampdown on pornography is part of a wider campaign to keep a tight grip on media in China.
In a sign the campaign may have a broader, more ideological function, the new rules also take aim at fraud, illegal lotteries and "rumour mongering", according to the official news agency Xinhua.
"The inflow of pornographic materials from abroad and lax domestic control are to blame for the existing problems in China's cyberspace," said Zhang Xinfeng, vice-minister of the ministry of public security, which is basically the police ministry.
The campaign targets the distribution of pornographic materials and "organising cyber strip shows, and purge the web of sexually-explicit images, stories, and audio and video clips," the ministry said.
The new crackdown is aimed at protecting young people from "negative online influences" and would also take aim at "content that spreads rumours and is of a slanderous nature", without giving details of what kind of content was involved.
There is certainly widespread disapproval in China, as elsewhere, of young people spending their hours indulging themselves in online games, pornography and chat rooms. It remains to be seen what form the campaign will take - whether it is a statement of intent or the signal of a more intensive crackdown on individual freedoms online.
There is a grand tradition of eroticism in Chinese literature - the 2,500-year-old Book of Songs has some fairly graphic moments. But erotic literature and all forms of pornography were banned under Mao Zedong.
While the opening up of the economy since the 1980s has not led to much of a change in the prurient attitudes to sexuality in China, pornography has made inroads, although it remains largely an online phenomenon, and is still a taboo on newspaper stands or on television.
Explicit blogs, often by young women trumpeting their sexual conquests, have made headlines, with the reporting a mixture of titillation and censure. Although the government is anxious to exploit the commercial opportunities the internet has to offer, cyberspace remains an irritant to the Chinese leadership as it is difficult to keep tabs on.
The government employs 40,000 officials to monitor the internet and filters block both erotic terms and politically sensitive ones.
Dozens of cyber-dissidents have been detained in recent months for posting essays online.
China had 137 million internet users at the end of 2006.
The Xinhua agency cited a report by the Beijing Reformatory for Juvenile Delinquents said 33.5 per cent of its detainees were influenced by violent online games or erotic websites when they committed crimes such as robbery and rape.
In November last year, Chinese police cracked the largest pornographic website in the country and arrested the creator, Chen Hui, who was later sentenced to life imprisonment.
The website Chen contained more than nine million pornographic images and articles and it had attracted more than 600,000 registered users.
It's not just online content that's affected. Earlier this month, China's broadcasting watchdog, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, urged radio and television stations to reject "vulgar" programmes in favour of "healthy" productions.
In March, Beijing banned sending pornographic text messages or pictures via mobile phones after busting phone dealers who sold mass-storage devices containing porn.