China's Porn War Wages On
It's been a rough week for many of
Some sites were shut down because of pornographic materials, but others for merely containing "harmful comments," or posting "vulgar" material. While it's unknown as to whether the closures are temporary or permanent, but it's quite probable that more sites will also be targeted, many of which have no pornography at all.
Bullog.cn, a blog hosting site that was among the best-known of the recent closures was allegedly shut down because of "harmful comments." Interestingly enough, it also had connections to "Charter 08," a human rights petition that didn't go over too well with Chinese authorities.
So, was this closure caused by a desire to protect children from objectionable content, or to quiet political discourse?
Some of the content on the state-run China Daily website doesn't exactly help the case of the Chinese officials. The top 2 stories of the week are photo galleries of the "2008 China Lingerie Model Contest" and "Swimsuits: a highlight of art academies' recruitment."
While these images are extremely tame compared to an ad for
Granted, the relationship between the Chinese press and government isn't quite as straightforward or cozy as the average American would assume. At the same time, you would expect that a government-related website wouldn't be using images of girls in lingerie to ramp up its website hits during a massive campaign against pornography.
It will be interesting to see the next round of "vulgar" websites that must be shut down, and how the rest of this month long campaign shapes up.