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Christian Living

chinaconnection 01/08/09

China's War on Porn Gets Results

Just days ago, I was fairly skeptical about China's new efforts to crack down on Internet porn for various reasons. Topping the list was the fact that China had a very similar campaign last year, which lasted until September, 2008, conveniently ending after the Olympics.

While I'm sure it's still possible to find pornography on China's Internet, Google, Baidu, and other leading Web portals have already begun to comply with the new governmental regulations. The Google China blog states its online plan of action to be "a law-abiding corporate citizen" and to work together with the Internet and community to improve the climate online.

Other Web sites went further. Baidu released a statement on its Web site with an apology "to Internet users for any negative effects given to society." Sina.com "feels deeply sad and concerned."

These swift actions taken by these companies bring up another question. If it's so simple to delete pornographic material from search indexes, why don't they do it elsewhere? Why aren't there more precautions worldwide to protect children from accidentally stumbling upon inappropriate content when they're doing a routine Internet search?

Even if some people might not want the extra Internet security, I'm sure plenty of others would appreciate these efforts.

Although these companies have taken immediate action, will this effort be enough to comply with the fairly vague regulations?

For example, in terms of blocking "vulgar" materials, how does any company know whether or not their efforts have been enough? It's still possible for sites to slip through the Web portals' filtering technology, and what, exactly, constitutes "vulgar content?"

Despite these ongoing challenges, these efforts have yielded initial results, but I don't know that they'll be enough for China to win its war on porn.

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