China attempts porn shut down
BEIJING (AP) - January 23, 2008 China's Public Security Ministry launched a crackdown on
Internet pornography last year, saying it had "perverted China's
young minds."
Nearly 2,000 people involved in Internet pornography activities
also were penalized, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Separately, Xinhua said 33 people were arrested in connection
with a Web site that allowed customers, mainly in Taiwan, to view
live sex shows filmed at 12 separate locations in the southern
Chinese city of Zhuhai.
Xinhua said 23 of those arrested were performers who were
ordered detained for 15 days, while the 10 others, including two
Taiwanese, were managers. It did not say when the arrests took
place, but said the heavily trafficked site had been among those
targeted in the crackdown last year.
Cash, computers and film equipment were also seized, Xinhua
said.
China forbids pornography and paid sex in virtually all forms,
although prostitution is common and the government's Internet
police struggle to block pornographic Web sites based abroad.
China's online population has soared to 210 million people and
could surpass the United States this year to become the world's
biggest, the official China Internet Network Information Center
said earlier this month.
The government will increasingly concentrate on Web sites that
have audio or video, blogging or send information to cell phones,
Xinhua said.
China recently said it wanted to exert more control over
Internet videos and video-sharing Web sites.
The government regularly censors and restricts access to content
it considers subversive or politically sensitive, and Chinese Web
sites often hire their own censors to eliminate certain content.