Six pornographic websites have been shutdown by Beijing Internet
authorities in an effort to prevent their so-called 'negative'
influence on society.
The six websites, including "www.ysdm.com" and "www.xf13.net",
contained what was described as “unhealthy content” and were
shutdown Friday in accordance with website regulations, the
newspaper Beijing News reported on Saturday.
Operators of two other outlets were given a deadline to clean up
the contents of their websites after an investigation, the paper
said.
In early April a proposal to operate 'civilized' Internet
websites won support from fourteen major providers in the city. The
Internet authorities have also increased their supervision of
websites.
In recent times the Internet industry in China has made
remarkable progress and now has more than 700,000 websites with a
further 25,000 being added each year. There are more than 100
million Internet users in the country.
In 2004 the Chinese government kicked off a massive campaign to
weed out pornography from the rapidly-growing Internet.
In 2005, 11 people were jailed for up to 12 years for running an
obscene website in China's largest case of Internet pornography to
date.
(Xinhua News Agency April 30, 2006)