China's nationwide campaign to crack down on pornographic
websites is in full swing.
In the first 10 days of the campaign, nearly 700 pornographic
websites have been taken down in Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing
municipalities and Liaoning and Guangdong provinces. According to
public authorities, the websites involved production, trade and
dissemination of lewd movies, still and video pictures, and
arrangements of pornographic performances via chat room services.
Some of them even made use of juvenile education networks for porn
services.
Internet service providers across the nation have introduced a
real-name registration system and forbidden to collect service
charges for pornographic websites. Those violating the rules will
be placed on a blacklist by local telecom supervisory authorities.
Internet cafes are requested to install special software to keep
lewd information away from web surfers. Meanwhile, informant
centers, hotlines and email services have been launched in many
areas to solicit complaints about the Internet porn business.
Governments are also taking legal action.
On Friday, a man surnamed Deng, the lawyer for a porn trade
website that had been shut down in Chengdu, capital city of
southwest China's Sichuan
Province, was brought to trial. This was the first Internet
porn case the city has prosecuted since the special campaign
started.
In May, a 20-year-old hacker was arrested on charge of invading
legal computer information systems and disseminating lewd
advertisements for profit in Xiantao City in central China's HubeiProvince.
The man, surnamed Rong, illegally hooked up to a low-income
welfare information system operated by the Bureau of Civil Affairs
of Tianjin Municipality in north China, and launched a lewd
homepage called "Sexual Paradise." In two months he recruited
66,000 registered club members.
With the anti-porn campaign proceeding quickly, some officials
and experts have warned that importance should not only be placed
on this special operation, but also on the establishment of a
long-term mechanism for ensuring a clean cyberspace.
To this end, high technology will play a vital role, as it can
be used not only to crack down on domestic Internet porn, but also
to block lewd overseas websites. Existing and developing technology
should be sufficient to ensure the Chinese government's triumph in
its campaign, a researcher with the state lab on national
information security said on condition of anonymity.
Some experts believe rampant web porn services to be partly the
result of weak ethics education among the young people,
particularly minors.
Recent statistics show that among the 87 million netizens in
China, more than 30 percent are students, and some 50 percent are
under the age of 24. Of the minor netizens, 46 percent often
visited lewd websites.
Lack of sex education, especially for college students, is seen
by some as another reason why there were so many young people
browse pornographic webpages.
"Porn websites are rooted in young people who were thirsty for
the facts of life, on which education is so deficient in the
nation," said He Tao, a student from the prestigious Shanghai
JiaoTong?University.
He was echoed by a dozen more students from Wuhan, in central
China, and Xi'an, in northwest China, during an interview with
Xinhua. They remained calm about Internet porn contents and
services, but paid more attention to measures the government would
likely take to supplement the normal sex education.
Traditionally, Chinese parents have not discussed sex with their
children. Many are still reluctant to do so.
Last year, China Social Survey, a well-known domestic
sociological research firm, conducted a survey in Beijing,
Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenyang and some other major Chinese cities.
The findings showed that 92.5 percent of the students investigated
have encountered sex-related problems, but only 2.6 percent got
answers from their parents.
Sex education is almost absent in universities and colleges,
though related courses, limited to basic physiological knowledge,
have been arranged in middle schools.
Currently, only a few Chinese universities have lectures on sex
education in China. Curious students are therefore often forced to
turn to porn websites, video tapes and cartoons for answers.
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(Xinhua News Agency August 1, 2004)