China needs a law to restrict a "violence culture" that is
permeating in the country's media to protect the country's
vulnerable young souls from being poisoned, a national legislator
said on the sideline of the ongoing annual parliamentary session on
Tuesday.
No other alternative but legislation can limit the spread of
violence-dominated contents in media by clearly define where and
how it can be carried, said Peng Fuchun, a deputy to the National
People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature.
Peng, a philosophy professor from Wuhan University, central Hubei Province, said a culture of violence is
propagating rapidly in China as a result of social transition,
leaving ill impact on social morals and blighting juvenile's
growth.
Films, video products and Internet are major media where
violence contents prevail, according to Peng.
The lack of a film rating system and an effective TV products
censorship has left teenagers exposed to media's violent scenes,
said Peng, who also blamed film and TV producers who promote their
products with detailed, vivid description of violence, horror and
crime as selling points.
Many online games and about 70 percent of non-education Internet
information contain violence, according to Fu.
"Online games about terrors and wars give young people a chance
to taste the pleasure of fighting and killing in the cyber space,
while heroes and knight-errants in films, TV dramas and cartoons
are unluckily at the same time killers, who always become
teenagers' idols to follow and imitate in the real world," Fu
said.
The lawmaker admitted that it is impossible to ban the culture
of violence, and simply putting it under the attacks from the
public opinion can neither solve the problem.
"We must make a law to restrict its spread," Fu said.
He also said psychological counseling services should be offered
to teenagers to help keep them away from violence.
China has seen a 68 percent rise in juvenile crimes in the past
five years and that figure is going to rise, according to a survey
by the China Youth and Children Studies research group early this
year.
A 13-year-old student in northern Hebei Province killed three people and burned
a house last summer allegedly after watching a TV drama called
Zhui Xiong, or Hunting the Murderer, in which the
hero killed several people to revenge his father's death.
A report released by the China National Children's Center last
year said that 13 percent of Chinese Internet users under the age
of 18 are Internet addicts.
(Xinhua New Agency March 6, 2007)