We Have Chinese Porn

The Chinese government has shut down thousands of websites and social media sites in a bid to purge the internet of online pornography, it was revealed today.

The nation’s state media services announced the progress of its ‘Cleaning the Web 2014’ campaign today, which has resulted in the closure of 110 websites and more than 3,300 accounts containing ‘obscene’ material since January.

Online pornography is illegal in China and the latest drive, to last until November, follows repeated attempts to censor sites displaying the material.

An unidentified spokesman for the official Xinhau state agency said: “Disseminating pornographic information online severely harms the physical and mental health of minors, and seriously corrupts social ethos”.

But overseas critics have expressed concern about the crackdown, which they say represents the latest attempt by the government to inflict broader censorship of websites.

Recently, the government has closed social messaging networks run by outspoken communists. And last year, the state attempted to purge the spread of online rumors in a move seen as a tool to punish critics of the ruling Communist Party.

Recently, a Beijing court sentenced a man to three years in prison for spreading rumors on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter.

Sina, the company that owns China’s über-popular Twitter-like service Weibo, has had two key licences withdrawn by Beijing in retaliation for allegedly allowing the publication of articles and videos containing pornographic content.

A message from the National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications seen by Xinhua claimed that 20 articles and four videos posted to Sina.com had broken anti-porn laws and as a result the government had revoked the firm’s internet publishing and audio and video publishing licences.

The firm has been hit with a “large number of fines”, some staff have been detained and some local reports claim Sina has already shuttered its online book site for the time being.

The statement apparently said Sina had not learned its lesson after being punished twice last year for publishing banned content and was “turning a cold shoulder on social responsibility”.