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China Launches War On Porn
BEIJING - China has launched a "people's war" against pornography on the Internet, giving websites a deadline until September to rid themselves of indecent content, state media said.
Officials have so far identified 500 websites across China that carry pornographic pictures and film clips, the China Daily reported.
Zhou Yongkang, the minister of public security, has vowed to crack down on the activities and severely punish those found guilty of violating the law, according to the paper.
President Hu Jintao has gone one step further, saying a "people's war" must be waged against pornography on the Internet.
It appears the Chinese have answered their president's call, filing a total of 22,000 complaints on a dedicated government website set up to make it easier for the public to report online wrongdoing.
The vast majority of these complaints -- 95 percent -- have been about websites with pornographic content.
Hundreds of websites, including the most influential ones, publish "indecent or even pornographic content" to attract users, the Xinhua news agency reported, without giving examples.
If they have not erased their pornographic content by September, they will lose their license to publish news stories, Xinhua said.
The crackdown on Internet porn reflects two top concerns of the Chinese leadership, about the ethical standards of the young and about the subversive potential of the Internet.
Since this spring, Chinese top leaders have called for greater efforts to raise the morals of the nation's adolescents in remarks reminiscent of previous campaigns against "spiritual pollution."
At the same time, they have imposed measure after measure to seek to control the Internet, a nearly impossible task with 80 million registered users.
State media reported last month that the government had suspended the registration of new Internet cafes, following a three-month sweep in which it closed 16,000 existing ones.
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