China wants PC companies to install screening software so that certain material from the web is censored. The central government of the most populous nation does not think that is enough.
About a week after accusations flooded in from all over the world that Microsoft’s (MSFT) new Bing search engine made access to online pornography too easy, China is accusing Google (GOOG) of letting lewd material slip within its cyber-borders.
According to the AP, “We have found that the English version of google.com has spread lots of pornographic, lewd and vulgar content, which is in serious violation of Chinese laws and regulations,” said foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang at a news briefing.
Since hundreds of millions of Chinese are online, the national government is fighting the same kind of battle that the US is in its war on drugs. Pornography and cocaine have a habit of running roadblocks. Too many people want what they have to offer which always pushes ingenuity to its limits.
The Chinese aversion to pornography is odd. Clearly the nation cannot prevent lewd sex acts inside the country and cannot completely control the distribution of printed pornography. China does little to crack down on its pirate DVD industry. Not all of the content being shipped back to the US on cheap disk is PG-rated Disney (DIS) movies.
The obsession of the Chinese government with keeping online pornography off the country’s PCs only titillates the interest of its citizens. They can ask, very fairly, what is it that the Americans enjoy so much that they cannot see it as well?
Douglas A. McIntyre
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