BEIJING - Chinese President Hu Jintao on Monday launched a campaign to rid the country's Internet of "unhealthy" content and make it a springboard for Communist Party doctrine, according to state television report.
With Hu presiding, the Communist Party Politburo—its 24-member inner council—discussed cleaning up the Internet, and during the meeting Hu promised to place the oft-unruly medium more firmly under propaganda controls.
"Development and administration of Internet culture must stick to the direction of socialist-advanced culture, adhere to correct propaganda guidance," according to a summary of the meeting read on the news broadcast. "Internet cultural units must conscientiously take on the responsibility of encouraging development of a system of core socialist values."
In 2006, China's Internet users increased by 26 million, or 23.4 percent, year upon year, to reach 137 million, Chinese authorities have estimated.
The meeting was far from the first time China has sought to rein in the Internet. In January, Hu made a similar call to "purify" it, and there have been many such calls before. However, the announcement indicated Hu wants ever-tighter controls as he braces for a series of political hurdles and seeks to govern a generation of young, Web-savvy Chinese citizens.
The Communist Party is preparing for a congress later this year that is set to give Hu another five-year term and open the way for him to choose eventual successors. In 2008, Beijing will host the Olympic games, when the party's economic achievements will be on display, along with its political and media controls.
That lucrative market has attracted big investors such as Google and Yahoo, both of which have received criticism from some groups for bowing to China's censors. The one-party government already wields a vast system of filters and censorship that blocks the majority of users from sites offering uncensored opinion and news; but, even in China, news of official misdeeds and dissident opinion has been able to travel quickly through online bulletin boards and blogs. Authorities also have launched repeated crackdowns on pornography and salacious content. The latest campaign against porn and "rumor-spreading" was announced earlier this month.
The meeting also announced that schools and sports groups would be encouraged to use healthy competition as a way to shape youth, the report said. "Sports plays an irreplaceable role in the formation of young people's thinking and character, mental development, and aesthetic formation."
