China afraid of the Internet

As China’s Internet-savvy population grows larger each day, government officials there are worried about the detrimental effects of the Internet on both society and the economy.

One Chinese website, tencent.com (and its subsidiary QQ.com), is especially troubling for the Chinese leadership. Tencent’s messaging service, which boasts usage by over two-thirds of China’s Internet users, has its own virtual economy with currency counted in “QQcoins”. The online currency is so ubiquitous that it is now accepted by some other Chinese companies as legal tender. Fearing that the QQcoins are being used to circumvent China’s strict anti-gambling laws and the potential for the virtual economy to negatively affect the real Chinese economy, the government banned the use of virtual currency for anything other than virtual services.

Meanwhile, the Internet has become such a terrible social ill that China has indefinitely postponed approval for any new Internet cafes, according to a notice issued by 14 different government entities.

China is in the throes of a campaign to “purify” the Internet, and most of the content of the notice was aimed at tightening controls over the country’s estimated 113,000 Internet cafes. It blamed the cafes for fostering “internet addiction,” banned approval of new ones this year, and toughened penalties for those that admit minors.

If you still aren’t convinced of the Chinese government’s proposition that the Internet is harmful, check this out:

An obese 26-year-old man in northeastern China died after a “marathon” online gaming session over the Lunar New Year holiday, state media said on Wednesday.