China Aims to Remove "Unhealthy" Online Content
President wants Internet to become "springboard for Communist Party doctrine"
By: Jed Nottingham
Posted: 04/23/2007
BEIJING -
Chinese President Hu Jintao on Monday launched a campaign to
rid the country's Internet of "unhealthy" content and make it
a springboard for Communist Party doctrine, according to
state television report.
With Hu presiding, the Communist Party Politburo—its
24-member inner council—discussed cleaning up the Internet,
and during the meeting Hu promised to place the oft-unruly
medium more firmly under propaganda controls.
"Development and administration of Internet culture must
stick to the direction of socialist-advanced culture, adhere
to correct propaganda guidance," according to a summary of
the meeting read on the news broadcast. "Internet cultural
units must conscientiously take on the responsibility of
encouraging development of a system of core socialist
values."
In 2006, China's Internet users increased by 26 million, or
23.4 percent, year upon year, to reach 137 million, Chinese
authorities have estimated.
The meeting was far from the first time China has sought to
rein in the Internet. In January, Hu made a similar call to
"purify" it, and there have been many such calls before.
However, the announcement indicated Hu wants ever-tighter
controls as he braces for a series of political hurdles and
seeks to govern a generation of young, Web-savvy Chinese
citizens.
The Communist Party is preparing for a congress later this
year that is set to give Hu another five-year term and open
the way for him to choose eventual successors. In 2008,
Beijing will host the Olympic games, when the party's
economic achievements will be on display, along with its
political and media controls.
That lucrative market has attracted big investors such as Google and
Yahoo,
both of which have received criticism from some groups for
bowing to China's censors. The one-party government already
wields a vast system of filters and censorship that blocks
the majority of users from sites offering uncensored opinion
and news; but, even in China, news of official misdeeds and
dissident opinion has been able to travel quickly through
online bulletin boards and blogs. Authorities also have
launched repeated crackdowns on pornography and salacious
content. The latest campaign against porn and
"rumor-spreading" was announced earlier this month.
The meeting also announced that schools and sports groups
would be encouraged to use healthy competition as a way to
shape youth, the report said. "Sports plays an irreplaceable
role in the formation of young people's thinking and
character, mental development, and aesthetic formation."
