Beijing urges Google and others to 'purify' Web of porn
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HONG KONG: The Chinese government broadened its recent effort to limit pornography on the Internet by criticizing 19 Internet companies by name Monday, including Google and Baidu, the providers of the two most popular search engines in the country.
A statement posted by early Monday afternoon on a government-run news site said the Ministry of Public Security and six other government agencies would work together "to purify the Internet's cultural environment and protect the healthy development of minors."
A similar statement had been issued Dec. 5 but attracted little attention.
The statement Monday went a step further, saying that 19 companies had failed to do enough to stop the spread of pornography. By Monday evening, the names of the companies were posted on the same official Web site along with a terse statement explaining why each company was on the list.
The entry for Google simply said: "Searching for images results in an enormous number of vulgar, pornographic sites. Google, receiving notice, did not undertake any effective measures."
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A Google spokeswoman for China, Jin Cui, said the company had no immediate reaction to the criticism and was unaware of any new regulations or restrictions on the Internet in China.
The government list of offending Internet companies had a similarly phrased criticism of Baidu, the market leader among Internet search engines in China.
A spokeswoman answering the phones at Baidu's press office Monday afternoon said that only one of her colleagues was authorized to discuss the issue, adding that the person was unavailable.
In issuing its warning, China appeared to be focusing on large companies that provide search engines, blog hosting and chat forums.
Rebecca MacKinnon, an assistant professor of media studies at Hong Kong University who specializes on Internet controls in China, said the criticism issued Monday represented the latest in a long series of measures to limit the Internet in China, and did not appear to represent a long-term policy shift.
The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, which has separate authority in China to regulate video on the Internet, conducted its own campaign in March against businesses that made pornographic videos available.
That campaign included shutting down the Internet operations of one of the most popular video-sharing services, Tudou, for a full day as a warning.
Many Chinese, particularly young adults, have become much less conservative about public discussions of sex and the commercialization of sex over the past three decades, as the country has opened up to the West and shifted toward a more market-oriented economy. The authorities have periodically tried to limit the spread of prostitution and pornography, with little sign of success.
MacKinnon said that while restrictions on Internet pornography have fluctuated, political expression was consistently limited on the Internet.
"The same mechanisms used to censor porn are used to censor anything else people want to censor," she said.
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