Beijing Internet authorities shutdown six pornographic websites
in an effort to prevent their so-called 'negative' influence on
society.
The six websites, including "www.ysdm.com" and "www.xf13.net",
contained what was determined to be 'unhealthy content' and were
shut down Friday according to relevant regulations, the newspaper
Beijing News reported on Saturday.
Operators of two other websites were given a deadline to clean
up the contents on their websites after an investigation, the paper
said.
In early April, a proposal to operate 'civilized' Internet
websites way won support from fourteen major websites in the city.
The Internet authorities have also increased their supervision of
Internet websites.
In recent years, the Internet industry in China has seen
remarkable progress and now has more than 700,000 websites, with
more than 25,000 being added each year. There are more than 100
million Internet users in the country.
In 2004, Chinese government kicked off a massive campaign to
weed out pornography from the rapidly-growing Internet.
In 2005, 11 people were jailed for up to 12 years for running an
obscene website in China's largest case of Internet
pornography.
(Xinhua News Agency April 30, 2006)