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Porn unblocked for Chinese web users
Fri, 23 Jul 2010 11:32a.m.
Word leaked out slowly, spread by web-savvy folks on Twitter: Internet porn
that once was blocked by Chinese government censors was now openly
available.
"Are they no longer cracking down on pornographic websites? A lot of porn
sites and forums are accessible," technology blogger William Long wrote on
his feed.
Messages like that startled Chinese web surfers, long accustomed to the
authorities' internet blockades. The country had been in the midst of
highly publicised anti-pornography sweeps, and there had been no
announcement of any change in government policy.
Yet eight weeks later, the porn sites are still accessible. Still
unanswered are questions about whether it's an official change in policy, a
technical glitch or some sort of test by the usually disapproving Chinese
internet police.
"This has never been done with the (Chinese) internet before," said
Beijing-based internet analyst Zhao Jing, who goes by the English name
Michael Anti.
Whatever the reason, the change has thrown into sharper relief what many
people see as the main mission of China's aggressive internet censors:
blocking sites and content that might challenge the political authority of
the communist government. Websites about human rights and dissidents are
also routinely banned.
"Maybe they are thinking that if internet users have some porn to look at,
then they won't pay so much attention to political matters," Anti said.
The government has not said why the porn sites were unblocked. Repeated
calls to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology went
unanswered, and the Ministry of Public Security and State Council
Information Office - all involved in web monitoring - did not respond to
faxed requests for comment.
China has the world's largest online population of 420 million - more than
the entire US population. While the internet is the most freewheeling of
tightly cosseted media in China, the government has the most extensive
Internet policing system, from technical filters that block sites based on
certain words to human monitors who scan bulletin boards and micro-blogging
posts.
Censorship issues led Google Inc. to clash publicly with China earlier this
year and eventually close its China search engine and redirect users to
Hong Kong.
Tired of the controls, many Chinese have learned to get around "the Great
Firewall," or GFW, as the system is known.
Few Chinese will admit to surfing for porn because it is illegal. Many
sites are still inaccessible, and of those, sites that somehow evade
control are usually blocked within hours. But the demand is there.
"The more they restrict something, the more people pay attention," said a
29-year-old employee at a state-owned logistics company who did not want to
be identified because he surfs for porn on business trips.
Sites that suddenly became available around late May include the
English-language YouPorn and PornHub, along with numerous Chinese sites
offering downloads, though Anti and others say well-known Chinese-language
sites remain blocked.
Wen Yunchao, a popular blogger who writes about social issues and the
Internet under the name Beifeng, said even more porn sites have become
available in recent days, including a well-known Chinese site called
Xingba, or Sex Bar.
"In the past, the GFW would use pornography as an excuse" for censorship,
Wen said. "Now they're not even trying to cover it up."
Chinese society's conservative attitudes about sex are rapidly changing,
especially among the young, who make up the majority of internet users. The
trial and conviction this year in southern China of a college professor who
used the internet to organize orgies touched off a debate about privacy and
sexual freedom.
A poll of 900 female graduates at 17 Shanghai universities showed that 70
percent think one-night stands aren't immoral, and more than half said they
could understand if a girl became a rich man's lover, according to state
media.
Liao Shengqing, a journalism professor who led the study, was cited by the
People's Daily newspaper as saying that "students' attitudes come from
their respect for individual privacy. They regard sex as a private matter
and respect other people's choices."
Some speculate the proliferation of social networking sites and
Twitter-like services was taxing the Great Firewall, requiring the
government to unblock some porn sites to free up capacity for other
snooping.
"I think when the GFW realized they were not able to block all domain
names, they reallocated resources to block more urgent or political sites,"
said Long, the tech blogger who is based in Shenzhen and would not give his
real name in Chinese.
As part of the change, employees in the office that cracks down on
pornography and unauthorized publications no longer have to report
overseas-based porn sites to police because of the difficulties in tracking
down Chinese involved, the state-run magazine Oriental Outlook reported in
May. Censors only need to note the sites, the report said.
Because a dozen or so agencies regulate the Internet in China, the porn
availability may have resulted from a shifting of responsibilities, said
Xiao Qiang, director of the Berkeley China Internet Project at the
University of California-Berkeley.
"The Great Firewall is not that serious toward blocking porn sites. It
never was," he said. The true targets, he said, include political
information, current affairs, negative reports about leaders, and anything
that may trigger a protest.
"That kind of information is where the censorship focus is really," Xiao
said. "Porn, they're just halfheartedly doing it."