China has shut down 8 600 internet cafés in the past two months as part of an ongoing crackdown on the media, state press said on Tuesday.
”Since our video conference on this issue on February 19, we have banned 8 600 underground internet bars,” the People’s Daily quoted Minister of Culture Sun Jiazheng as saying.
”At present, there still exists many problems with the management at internet cafés and internet service providers.”
Sun suggested the campaign is far from over and urged governments at the grassroots level to crack down on internet bars providing services to under-age users and to impose stiffer fines on cafés violating regulations.
Overseeing the crackdown is a special bureau headed by Sun, which has linked up with 10 other ministries responsible for areas including education, law, finance, civil affairs, youth and telecommunications, the paper said.
The crackdown comes after the propaganda ministry annnounced last October a new ”educational campaign” aimed at reaffirming Communist Party control over the press, including television, print and the electronic media.
Despite government restrictions, China is second only to the United States in the number of people online, with users rising to 79,5-million by December 2003 from 59,1-million a year earlier.
Internet cafés are often the only way to access the web for many Chinese due to the prohibitive costs of home computers, especially in rural villages and towns.
Besides cracking down on anti-government and subversive material, the measures are also aimed at curbing pornography and banning those under 16 from internet gaming bars that have become magnets for rural and village youth.
In the past two months, the government has also greatly restricted web logs (blogs) and discussion forums, banned internet bars from operating within 200m of schools and set up video surveillance cameras in internet cafés in Shanghai. — Sapa-AFP