China: “Purifying” the Chinese Internet
Written byRebecca MacKinnon
The Chinese newspaper Southern Weekend has a detailed article explaining how the Chinese government goes about censoring and controlling internet speech. EastSouthWestNorth has a full translation.
(More background at Chinadigitaltimes.)
Written byRebecca MacKinnon
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This is a case of the government making decisions that could more easily be made by individual parents, just by buying filtering software. What makes it doubly strange is that even if people viewed pornography almost non-stop, they would still have to conform to the official policy on childbirth, which is more or less one child (boy) to one and a half child (girl first, then try for a boy). That seems to be a stronger legal prohibition than a ban on site content. On other websites, you see Chinese fears that there will be a “nation of batchelors” due to the preference for boy children.
Moreover, there is the curious mixed-message being given in the official internet newspaper–Xinghua News Agency. It’s loaded with pictures of underwear models, Russian beauties, fashion shows, Western female movie stars. For the longest time, they keep the Chinese character for the word “Randy” in the lower left hand corner of the site. It amounts to basically “soft porn.” And that’s an official site.