Slashdot Mirror
China Arrests Thousands In Internet Porn Crackdown
Clandestine_Blaze writes "Chinese police have arrested 5,394 people — with another 4,186 criminal cases in the works — in one of the largest crackdowns on Internet porn in the country. Even more arrests are expected in 2010, according to the Ministry of Public Security's website (In Chinese or Google translated into English). According to the Reuters article on the crackdown, one of the justifications was that the pornography was 'threatening the emotional health of children.' From the English translation of the Ministry of Public Security's website linked above, it appears that certain provinces are also offering 1,000 yuan and 2,000 yuan rewards, per person, for reporting illegal websites to the government."
Um... you can still go to jail for porn in the USA
As an American living in China, it pains me to see this sort of hysterical nonsense on Slashdot all the time. China is the new Evil Empire, apparently. Scream "fascist" all you want, but you and most other westerners do not understand Chinese civilization or the role that government has traditionally played in it. Then again, maybe the U.S. should "pre-empt" their errors, and save China from the Chinese. :-P
The basic reason that the Chinese do not allow porn is that they believe that it demeans women. This goes back to the revolution, in which women were eager to participate to get some basic equality with men. You can argue that women have a choice, but in poor provinces, you can bet that it would be akin to prostitution, where young women are basically forced into the lifestyle because they have no other options.
Chinese society is quite conservative about sex, or at least it has that appearance. For example, it isn't unheard of to hear of a foreigner beaten into a coma for deflowering local girls. In a country where virginity is prized and sex can almost be like a contract for marriage, that sort of thing isn't taken lightly. In the same way, if Chinese people think their women are being debased (as in porn), they tend to get very angry.
I am not going to try to explain 5000 years of Chinese civilization to you, or explain every way that it is different from the West, but I would encourage Slashdotters to read this article from the LA Times. It explains quite a bit about the role of government in China and how the West has gotten it wrong with predicting that China would become more like them (developing a rights tradition, embracing democracy, etc.).
Article: Understanding China
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