Porn remains on Chinese takeaway menu

happygeek 0 350 Views

Remember when China officially declared war on Internet pornography and set a target of just six months to purge the Web of sexually explicit images, stories and AV clips? No, well read this to refresh your memory. While you are at it, make a note of the date: that story was posted back in April 2007. A little more than six months ago, and yet porn is as much of a reality in China today as it was back then.

In 2007 the Vice Minister of the Ministry of Public Security, Zhang Xinfeng, was quoted as stating that the boom of pornographic content on the Internet had "contaminated cyberspace and perverted China's young minds" and arguing that the inflow of pornographic materials from abroad and lax domestic control were "to blame for the existing problems in China's cyberspace."

Today we have Liu Zhengrong, the Deputy Director of the Chinese Cabinet Internet Affairs Bureau, saying that some 41 people have been arrested so far this month and 1250 pornographic websites closed down. Some 3.2 million pieces of 'porn' have also been deleted during the sweep. But as anyone who knows anything about the online sex industry will tell you, 3 million pieces of porn and a tad over 1000 websites are the equivalent of spitting in the ocean.

Liu says that the IAB has made some "apparent achievements" but admits it still has "a lot of work to do."

So much for regulating the Internet for porn and other 'lewd' content then. This despite ordering Google and other popular Chinese sites to block all porn from Chinese eyes.

According to the Window of China the anti-porn campaign has now also been extended to include mobile phone sex. Editor that seven government departments, including the State Council's Information Office, Ministry of Public Security and Ministry of Culture, have stated "We will incorporate 'lewd' messages spread via mobile phones into the crackdown."

Dani AI

Generated

As flagged, high‑profile "cleanups" often make headlines but do not equal elimination. That gap is practical: the internet is distributed, fast, and adaptive. Short, publicity‑driven sweeps tend to remove visible nodes while the underlying distribution — mirrors, foreign hosts, social platforms, private channels and offline sharing — keeps material circulating.

Technically, automated filters and manual takedowns face three hard limits: scale (millions of uploads), context (multimedia is harder to classify reliably), and jurisdiction (foreign‑hosted content requires cross‑border cooperation). Mobile and app ecosystems add extra friction for enforcement because content can move through private messaging, ephemeral posts, app stores, or physical media, where ordinary web takedown workflows are less effective.

From a policy and operational view, sustainable gains come from targeting producers and commercial distributors, improving platform transparency and notice‑and‑takedown procedures, and investing in prevention (education, parental controls, age‑verification where lawful). Broad, blunt measures often cause collateral overblocking and push activity into harder‑to‑monitor corners rather than stopping it. They also raise free‑speech and privacy tradeoffs that deserve scrutiny.

A realistic assessment distinguishes short‑term numbers (how many items removed this week) from durable impact (reduction in organized distribution, fewer underage exposures). Public health and law enforcement tools work better in combination than bans aimed at suppressing a behavior. In reply to , prohibiting normal human behavior is neither feasible nor an effective substitute for targeted enforcement, education, and health services.

Caution: discussions of technical circumvention or advice to evade lawful controls are not appropriate here. The practical question is how regulation, platform design, and social policy can be aligned to reduce harm without causing disproportionate collateral damage.

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John A 1,896 Vampirical Lurker

Or better yet, why don't they just ban sex. It's the root of their problem, and would eliminate STDs once and for all. Not to mention an effective curbing of overpopulation...

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