China to crackdown on porn transmitted through mobile phones

Beijing, Feb 18(ANI): Chinese authorities have unveiled tougher measures to clean up the telecommunications industry in the country, and said offensive material transmitted through mobile phones will be the main target of a crackdown on Internet porn.

In an official statement on its official website, the Chinese Industry and Information Technology Ministry said that it will introduce tougher measures to fight illegal mobile phone and Internet content providers as it has become much easier for them to evade supervision by the relevant authorities, The China Daily reports.

According to the statement, the country's three mobile carriers - China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom - have been required to examine the quality of their business partners.

It also says that Internet service providers should regularly check the content of websites, cut off irregular websites and put them on a blacklist.

As pornographic content usually exists as a result of subcontracting out servers, the Ministry has asked operators to provide effective remediation measures to streamline the problem.

China has pledged to intensify its online porn onslaught, which has spread to cell phone websites, chat rooms and instant messenger groups.

According to information from the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, till February 5, 1,635 illegal websites and 217 blogs displaying 'lewd' content faced a shutdown, while more than four million porn-related posts or messages were trashed.

Liu Yunshan, China's top official in charge of media and publicity, said: "Internet pornography is not only preventing the healthy development of the country's Internet services, but also eroding people's mind, destroying the moral standard of the society and endangering young people's healthy growth."

He added the government was bent on crushing "the vitality of pornography websites to the utmost and chop off the profit chains that porn sites feed on." (ANI)