China will exert more efforts to crack down on pornography and
illegal publications in 2005, aiming to create a favorable cultural
environment for its reform and opening up and socialist
modernization drive, a senior party official said.
Addressing a tele-conference held in Beijing Friday, Liu
Yunshan, head of the Publicity Department of the Chinese
Communist Party (CPC) Central Committee, said in the campaign
in 2005, top priority will be given to elimination of illegal
publications because these publications pose a serious threat to
social stability.
"To create a healthy environment for the young, we should
relentlessly crack down on books, cartoons, video-games with
contents of violence, porn, and superstitions and close down porn
web-sites and sex phone stations," he said.
Liu, also member of the Political Bureau and the Secretariat of
CPC Central Committee, said police should step up surveillance over
shops around campus, at airports and railway stations, and along
commercial streets to clear the selling or distribution of illegal
publications.
"The Internet and short messages sent by mobile phones should
also be closely examined," he added.
In last July, China launched a nationwide campaign to clean up
Internet porn that are supposed to harm the nation's "young
minds."
China has seized 229 million copies of illegal publications,
closed down 2,966 illegal publishing houses and more than 40,000
stalls and shops that sell illegal publications.
On Saturday, police announced national and regional hotlines to
report on cases of illegal publications across the country.
(Xinhua News Agency January 23, 2005)