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Complete Net Cafe Shutdown After Beijing Fire

Posted by timothy on from the quash-quash-quash dept.

lunchlady doris writes: "The BBC has this story that tells of a fire in an internet cafe in Beijing that killed 24 people. The mayor responded to this tragedy by shutting down all 2,400 cafes in the city, most of which are operated illegally. Only 200 cafes will be allowed to reopen, pending municipal regulation. Needless to say, the netizens of Beijing are pissed and see this as a move to quash the limited access to the net that the Chinese people currently have."

2 of 284 comments (clear)

  1. Re:China's up to some weird stuff by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Weird indeed. I'm actually on holiday in china so i got a chance to see the news on cctv4. apart from the fire hazard they also talked about the dangers of letting young people on the internet.And in the same item they talked about limiting youth access to karaoke bars.

    What's really weird is that my internet explorer refuses to open the beijing internet cafe story on yro.slashdot.org. strange because everything else on yro (including the is china losing control story) still works. being an old slashdot reader I ssh-ed to my unix box and used lynx instead. i've no idea how they would block a single url that way, but hey, i'm a westerner in china, so i'm a little paranoid...

    XENNA

    (sorry 'bout the layout, btw: same story on the pc next to me)

  2. Closing Net Cafe does NOT mean quashing Internet by gqy · · Score: 5, Interesting
    In China you can pay 80 Yuan ($10) monthly fee to have a dial-up account, which is affordable for most Chinese. A majority of the netizen in China can surf on Internet right from their home.

    People who go the Cafes are mostly teenagers. Closing the net cafes does not affect anything at all for most Internet surfers.

    I can remember, several years ago, there was a huge fire in a dance club, which killed hundreds of people. The city closed all its dance clubs for one month and only allow those which has the right license and meets fire standards to reopen. I think it is the same thing here for Net Cafes. It has nothing to do with quashing the Internet access. It can't.

    Notes: I just checked with friends in China. They can acess slashdot.com and cnn.com without any limitation.