Already cracking down on adult material and “questionable” sociopolitical content online, China’s government will lean even harder on the Internet as its Parliament began its annual session over the weekend.
The state-run Xinhua news agency reported March 1 that there would be “strict” round-the-clock Internet chat and forum monitoring applied to major Chinese Net portals. “Any messages submitted by Internet users,” Xinhua said, “will go through rigid censoring and filtering before appearing on the Internet.”
“Some messages sent on the Internet,” said deputy director of the Public Information and Internet Security Supervision Bureau Qin Rui, “are sent by those with ulterior motives.” Qin did not offer any further explanation, according to published reports, but those long familiar with Chinese politics usually consider “ulterior motives” a code phrase for criticism of the country’s Communist government.
China has cracked down heavily on adult and “subversive” material since last July and is believed to have closed over 12,000 Internet cafes in 2004, mostly over charges that the cafes were lax in enforcing security against porn watching but also because the government deemed the cafes lax in keeping minors out of the cafes when porn was surfed and in keeping “subversive” material from being written or accessed.
