Chinese Netizens, Rest Easy

The Chinese can rest easy tonight. I should know. I saw it on the news.

Tonight, I flipped on the evening broadcast of CCTV1. The station is part of the China Central Television (CCTV) family, which also runs channels such as CCTV2, CCTV3, CCTV4, CCTV5, and, well, you get the gist. Not exactly creatively named, but they don't have to be--any more than they have to sell ads. That's the glory of being a sub-ministry of the central government.

Tonight's evening news featured cops and computers. According to the report, today China's Internet police convened via a nationwide telecommunication conference to address the development of investigations into " yellow," or pornographic websites. China's first online meme in 2008, "very yellow, very violent," uttered by a middle-school student who was interviewed about the dangers of online porn by CCTV earlier this year, has already gone viral. Many have also ravishingly snatched up ethical debate regarding smut. It seems everyone has sex on the brain. Especially cops.

Most people know the Chinese government censors the Internet, but few understand the depth of monitoring that is undertaken and the amount of resources aimed at the effort, which include legions of officers tracking users and investigating infringement at the municipal, provincial and national level, 24-7. Friendlier reminders that you're being watched are "Jing Jing" and "Cha Cha," two characters who work to serve and protect you (from getting your jollies) and more. Find them as icons on many mainstream websites just above the complaint box where you can fink out someone who's being baaad. Although Jing Jing and Cha Cha are the names of the two characters, jing means "alert, vigilant," cha means "inspect," and together, jingcha, means police. Whether surfing on your mouse or playfully trampling your keyboard, they're just here to remind you that you can be friends too. Sort of.

Tonight's report, which I have hastily translated below (from the original Chinese transcript), featured puckish Chongqing 'net cops who reenacted hustling from hunching over their computers to the scene of the crime, or the scene of the server, as it were. Trying to look the part of serious policemen, however, their years of playing Counter-Strike failed them as they stumbled over one another running flat-footed and giggling to the police car.

Even after living here for five and half years, there's still something very disconcerting about turning on the news at 7pm and watching this. Through some cultural lens that I can't seem to completely shake, it's still obscene to me.

The Destruction of "Black Sunglasses" (Broadcast on CCTV1 on January 22, 2008)

Today, 13 committees convened together for a nationwide telecommunication conference addressing continuing development of legal strikes on obscene pornographic websites. The meeting called for increased dynamism in the action of combating these sites. From last year onwards, there has been great national momentum towards this goal with every Public Security Bureau destroying a group of pornographic sites. In the past few days, Chongqing investigated and captured a live video porn site.

When Chongqing Internet authorities received a tip off about the "Black Sunglasses Entertainment" website, they quickly and vigorously commenced an inspection. The police discovered the site was actually a P2P entity with live pornographic broadcasts. In order to increase popularity, each of the areas within the website competed with the other. The combined areas covered all angles of pornography. Because the site hasn't been up for long, members had not been required to register to sign on, which made the danger of this site's proliferation greater.

The Chongqing Ministry of Security Internet Supervising Squadron quickly organized an elite team, and several criminals will be facing jail time in different Chinese cities. Currently, the website's main organizers have already been captured by the police and sentenced by a court of law.

It is reported the website operated on a Chongqing server. It is clear that the server operator, who under law is responsible for any rented space, was neglectful in undertaking the necessary duties to monitor its guest. Currently, as creators of pornographic websites transform their methods, every Internet inspection department has adopted 24-hour surveillance. Internet police boxes and police icons also often appear on the web.

Currently, in comparison to before this attack on online "yellow" smut began, the web is already a cleaner one, but it's not completely rid of this problem. Especially, as evident in this program, we see that a small amount of telecommunications operations, content providers and pornographic websites have already built a profitable chain that creates a web enabling the space and the place for smutty material. Only by cutting this chain and checking the bloom and spread of obscene and pornographic activity can we provide the public with a "green" (healthy) Internet space.

Comments

[realitytrumpsbull]

Yeah, like there's not some kind of gov-peeps trolling message boards or whatever in the US.
The Internet is kind of like The Shadow: It's everywhere, but it's nowhere. Sort of. The intermediaries that provide all this internet service are hackers from way-back, and they're not only all up in your c: drive, they watch every packet that travels, or at least their 'bots do. When you get online, you're in Their World. They own it. Imagine what you could do with that kind of access to people's information, their electronic correspondence, their stock trades...you could digitally make little profiles of people, tap into their cell phones, make your own little 'myspace' of their contacts, misrepresent people online by sending fake emails, the fun never stops if you got Da Skilz, isn't that right, 'larry' or whatever your name is? Did you ever pay your child support, or was that a story, too?
No, really, trust the government AND AT&T. It's only China where the Bad People are...right, 'larry'? Riiiiiiight.

[hitsu]

Online porn serves as a good, socially acceptable reason to create a corps of online police to monitor other sorts of speech.

The biggest obstacle to the spread of online porn in China isn't the police, though, it's the banking system. There's no good way to charge people online for goods, though there are a few Paypal clones (and Paypal itself) providing the service. I think once it's reasonably easy to pay for, these sites will become impossible to shut down. Of course by then enough of the population will probably have Visas and Mastercards that they can go overseas to get their porn.

Or, they could just go down the street to one of the thousands of massage parlors and get the real thing, because the police clearly aren't cracking down on those.

[rburgess]

I was wondering how the Chinese censorship of the web worked. It is interesting to wonder what it must be like to grow up with your gov't editing everything for you. I wonder if in someways parents are relieved to have less concern over kids having the possibility to risque sites. But on the other hand I wonder if you would be more concerned, what if your kid said the wrong thing? Maybe showing people busting porn is the closest that people can get to show clips of or talk about porn, so that is why it has become so popular. A culturally accepted form of entertainment. It's weird though the same thing has caught on in the states. Law & Order SVU? A show dedicated to creating this mythical sex offending sickos and then busting them. Every week a new set of characters, as a form of entertainment? It brings sex offenders as everyday people, making it to easy for entertainment to turn into acceptance. As societal norms change. Odd. I do not like it.

[marieburns]

The Chinese translation is a nice touch. Bring on more Chinese media posts. Interesting to get this perspective.

[arfeeney]

It must be hard for Cha Cha to keep her balance on that mouse while blinking manically. This is a great piece that reminds us that, as open as China seems to have become, the government's attitude towards media freedom hasn't changed all that much.