A national campaign to crack down on pornographic websites has
achieved visible results, officials said yesterday, but they admit
there is still a long way to go.
During May's month-long campaign, which was a joint effort by 10
ministries, more than 300 domestic porn and salacious websites were
shut down.
Describing the campaign as a "people's war", Li Baozhong, head
of the government's press watchdog, attributed the success to
improved surveillance and tip-offs from members of a supportive
public.
"As well as the monitoring work done by public security
departments, we received at least seven tip-offs from the public
every day via our 24-hour hotline," Li, who is director of the
market supervision and administration bureau under the General
Administration of Press and Publication, said.
Li, who is also deputy director of the national anti-pornography
and anti-piracy office, said that over the past month his office
had blocked more than 4,000 porn links and filtered out more than
10,000 online porn games across the country.
"Determined to protect their huge profits, porn distributors
will do anything to avoid detection," Li said.
"They are becoming more and more insidious," he said.
Two weeks ago, officials in Beijing discovered a pornographic
program disguised as a set up file for a legitimate program.
Once opened, the file would automatically install thousands of
obscene novels, videos and cartoons on the user's computer.
"It is a constant battle to uncover the latest tricks," Li
said.
The Ministry of the Public Security said that as of yesterday,
the nationwide campaign had succeeded in blocking some 10,200 links
to pornographic material.
However, Li said that at present, the campaign could only combat
websites that were registered in China. Porn websites based
overseas were still online, he said.
In a bid to halt their activities, China's bank transaction
regulator has been asked to join the campaign.
Speaking at a conference in May on the porn issue, Liu Binjie
said: "More effort, as well as technological support, is needed to
tackle the problem."
A new system, which will limit the amount of time juveniles are
allowed to spend online, as well as controlling access to certain
types of content, is currently being developed and is expected to
be launched next month.
As of January, China had 137 million Internet users.
(China Daily June 5, 2007)