China launches campaign against pornography

Beijing: The Chinese government has kicked-started a two-month long campaign against pornography materials following adverse social consequences.

"Despite previous crackdowns, pornography, especially that on compact discs, are showing a tendency to rebound as many sellers hawk porn videos right outside computer shopping malls," an official statement said. It said in some cities, "even porns starring minors are available for sales, resulting in extremely serious harm to society". According to the National Office against Pornographic and Illegal Publication, the campaign from September 5 to November 5 will focus on enterprises, stores, websites and vagabond merchants that are involved in the sale of porn disks in large cities, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

It noted that the supply chains for some websites have not been completely cut off, and an increasing number of illegal advertisements with obscene content are posted on porn websites.
During the campaign, local anti-porn offices have been asked to cooperate with press and publication bureaus, police and local government departments in cracking major cases.

Last month, the Ministry of Public Security announced that China and the US jointly shut down a chain of pornographic websites, all of which were in Chinese and advertised to Chinese-speaking individuals in China, the US and elsewhere.

Wang Yong, a key operator of porn websites, was arrested in the US on June 23 by police, while in China more than 10 people suspected of maintaining the websites were detained.
China launched a special campaign in December 2009 against pornographic and vulgar content on the Internet, including the mobile Internet.
More than 60,000 pornographic websites were shutdown in the first 11 months of last year.
PTI