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China shuts Down 2,000 Net Cafes
Anonymous NetCafes are popular because they allow people to evade tough content laws, whose infringement on a personal homepage or message board authorities are likely to track to its source.
The Shanghai Daily said the move, China's second major clampdown on the popular cafes in a little more than a year, aims to regulate the Internet service market in line with rules set by the Ministries of Information Industry, Public Security and Culture and the State Administration of Industry and Commerce.
More than 56,800 Internet cafes or bars have been inspected during a probe that began in April, the newspaper said. It said police closed 53 Internet bars and ordered 59 others to suspend operations for "rectification and improvement" in Nanjing in the eastern province of Jiangsu.
Internet bars have mushroomed in China since first appearing in big cities in 1997. Mini-cyber bars can now be found in bookstores, barbershops, clothes stores — and the butcher's. To the government, they open the door to a dangerous world outside the Communist Party's control. To the people, they offer an opportunity to speak with anonymity, making cyberspace almost impossible to regulate despite a slew of high profile arrests since March.
China's laws broadly ban "socially destabilising content," breaches of public security, "divulging state secrets" and Internet pornography. Authorities closely monitor Web site content in search for buzzwords such as Taiwan, Tibet and the banned spiritual group Falun Gong, Web executives say. State media said on Wednesday China had 26.5 million Internet users at the end of June, up four million since the year began.
SOURCE: Reuters.
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