Chinese Internet Crackdown Coming

Don’t for a second believe that this is about pornography, it’s no more about porn than the Taliban burning CD shops is. It’s the march of repression against freedom, ignorance against ideas, indoctrination against education.

The cyber police in China are out in force to crackdown on “pornography” and other things which pollute youths and cause crime. In reality they are beefing up the cyber cops to stop the growing, uncontainable wave of ideas; just as Iran and other dictatorial countries are trying to stop freedom and knowledge.

Information can’t be stopped. Only fragile, repressive regimes feel they need to try.

Article at Reuters:

“Our preliminary figures for arrested youth criminals is that almost 80 percent of them have been seduced by the Internet,” he told a news conference.

“It makes people very pained to know that crimes are committed by people corrupted by obscene pictures and images,” Wu said.

Last week China announced a new campaign against Internet pornography that would also take aim at fraud, illegal lotteries and “rumor-spreading” to protect the country’s mainly young Internet users from “negative online influences”, state media said.

“The public security system will uphold the law during this campaign and also take tips from the public to clean up the pure space of the Internet,” Wu added.

Last November a Chinese court sentenced the founder of the country’s largest pornography Web site to life imprisonment.

Pornography was among the vices almost wiped out in China under the strict, puritanical rule of Mao Zedong. But since economic reforms began and social controls were loosened, it has become more readily available.

China has an army of cyber police who patrol the Internet for unfavorable content, but their targets are more often politically sensitive subjects than pornography or online scams.

Don’t for a second believe that this is about pornography, it’s no more about porn than the Taliban burning CD shops is. It’s the march of repression against freedom, ignorance against ideas, indoctrination against education.

Previously:

Freedom Advocates From China Sue Yahoo

Chinese Execution Busses

Chinese Blogger Jailed Six Years

Iranian Narrowband Internet Revolution

Chinese Blogger Silenced