An ongoing crackdown on Internet porn in China has closed 1,129 Adult Web sites since July, the Internet Society of China said December 22.
The ISC said they opened a Web site in June that has since received 95,000 reports of Adult and other "illegal" Web sites, with related departments in the Chinese government closing a total of 1,278 "illegal" sites, including a reported 114 sites involving gambling, "superstitious" activities, and "cult" propaganda.
The ISC said those closures mean what China's government considers illegal Web sites are down to 17.4 percent, compared to a reported 67 percent when the crackdown started in July.
The crackdown was first announced July 19, with officials fingering 500 Web sites across China which they said carried porn stills, and video and film clips. Seven hundred Websites were closed in the crackdown's first 10 days and a reported 224 arrests were made in a comparable timeframe.
As the crackdown continued in earnest, reports in August indicated about 40,000 search keywords were to be banned by Chinese search engines, which one of the engines, Baidu, said was good for blocking about 500,000 porn pages.
Also in August, the crackdown extended to print publishers, as Chinese publishers mounted a campaign against porn and non-porn erotica alike. "China has lately seen some publications of erotic contents and vulgar taste," said the China Publishing Group during a national publishing conference cited by the Chinese official news agency Xinhua, noting some publications “glorify one-night stands, cheating on spouses, and other living attitudes and manners that go against moral standards.”
In mid-August, the crackdown produced its first criminal conviction. Wang Yanli – known as China's "Porn Queen" – had operated a live audiovisual chat room charging visitors for seeing live, four-hour strip shows she organized, paying up 600 yuan to watch the shows. She was sent to prison for a year August 16, following her conviction by a People's Court in the Jiangsu province.
The government's Supreme People's Court and Supreme People's Protectorate handed down regulations taking effect September 7, that those making and sending porn online, over cell phones, and over other electronic devices, or running phone sex services, would face penalties as heavy as life imprisonment, with sites or services getting hits in six figures good for life sentences as "very severe crimes."
