Pornography is back on the Chinese Internet

My earlier hunch that China’s crackdown on vulgar online content is not going to be long-lasting and would primarily be used to muzzle political speech, leaving pornography unscathed, wasn’t wrong after all. The Epoch Times reports that some of the pornographic sites that had been blocked in the January campaign are now back online — ...

My earlier hunch that China's crackdown on vulgar online content is not going to be long-lasting and would primarily be used to muzzle political speech, leaving pornography unscathed, wasn't wrong after all. The Epoch Times reports that some of the pornographic sites that had been blocked in the January campaign are now back online -- some of them with new, more vulgar pictures:

My earlier hunch that China’s crackdown on vulgar online content is not going to be long-lasting and would primarily be used to muzzle political speech, leaving pornography unscathed, wasn’t wrong after all. The Epoch Times reports that some of the pornographic sites that had been blocked in the January campaign are now back online — some of them with new, more vulgar pictures:

Mr. Liu Yiming, member of the Independent Chinese Pen Center, is very familiar with website operations. He told RFA that ****.com, which was reported by the Xinhu News as being shut down, had been reopened while carrying many pornographic pictures.

Mr. Liu said, “I’ve discovered that many porn sites have been reopened after being shut down. This shows that the authorities’ claim of eradicating and managing low and vulgar websites was just an excuse. Their basic goal was to crackdown on those websites that dare to speak the truth. The Niubo Web site could not be reopened after being shut down. Even after changing its web address and switching to an overseas proxy server, it was still blocked by authorities, and Mainland Chinese are not able to have direct access unless they are able to use a proxy server. A lot of websites contain pornographic materials which cannot possibly escape the eyes of cyber police, and yet they do not block these websites. What matters the most to them is sensitive, political content.”

Evgeny Morozov is a fellow at the Open Society Institute and sits on the board of OSI's Information Program. He writes the Net Effect blog on ForeignPolicy.com

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