Cracking down on internet lewdness

The campaign against “vulgar” internet content is in full swing in China, and the timing couldn’t have come at a more interesting moment.

For one thing, the internet is abuzz with postings and photos of young Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi cavorting on a beach in the Caribbean with her fiancé. (Sorry, I’ll offer no links, just the photo you see of her here.) China Daily this morning calls the hubbub over the photos “an instant online carnival of voyeurism.”

Zhang, who was in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, was voted China’s most beautiful actress last month.

So just as some Chinese internet portals are apologizing for their “lewd” content, China is broadening the crackdown to include some U.S. companies, like MSN, operating in China. The crackdown has led to suggestions the anti-porn campaign is a cover for a broader crackdown on web companies. Indeed, among the platforms shut down today is Bullog.cn, the most influential liberal blog platform in China. The site hosts blogs of many pro-democracy intellectuals.

 But mostly, the crackdown seems targeted at domestic portals that seem to push the envelope in trying to get eyeballs.

As China Daily notes today in a column by Raymond Zhou: “Most portal sites in China look like a high school boy’s fantasy room, with half-naked women in all kinds of postures.”

Even the state media gets involved. One wag a few years ago used to call Xinhua, the state news agency, “Skin-hua” for its propensity to put cheesecake photos on its website.

The most interesting comment I saw about the crackdown, though, is on this website which interviewed Kaiser Kuo, the digital media maven at Ogilvy China. Here’s an excerpt of what he said:

“I don’t think it has a thing to do with dissent: It’s just what it is, a crackdown on porn. They targeted some of the biggest web properties in China (Sina, Sohu, Tencent, Netease) as well as many other smaller sites, and they’re just trying to get rid of porn, which is still pretty pervasive on the Chinese internet despite many similar crackdowns in years past. . . . Second-guessing the motivations of the Chinese state when it comes to internet policies reminds me of what Freud said. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

Comments

[Helena Cobban]

One aspect of all the lascivious displays of female skin-- on internet sites and elsewhere-- is the degree to which such displays are an expression (even if only unconsciously so) of a strongly Boys Only approach to the discursive space-- an assumption that is a space for childish males to romp around in. This can make all these places very disquieting places for any females who want to be taken seriously as public intellectuals to feel comfortable in.

Plus, I don't understand Xinhua's obsession with the silliest items in US pop culture.

[OtOh]

you know, even Xinhua and People's Daily want to increase eyeballs on there websites.

[boyoh]

On Kaiser Kuo:

And sometimes a corporate shill is just a corporate shill, and a whore is just a whore.

How can he even comment with his lips around the Communist party's proverbial member?

[zarxo]

I feel that one world squeezing. Do we have to actually fulfull the Christian Bible? I mean is it absolutely necessary to give the world a big ole hug?

Let's keep the "evil" down and let natural selection have its course.

Aritficial natural selection, America knows how to do it best: a CASHIER at Wal-Mart (Hilary's Old board) asked another co-worker what was a twenty dollar cash back on $2.13. "Please pinch me."

We have no business telling the world to run it's business. For example, we send our jobs to China to make us toys, yet we "refrain from telling them 'how to make em.'" Surely, that was on purpose to get a cheaper product--and the lead scare starts all over again--didn't Americans deal with that already in the 70s? Our business world is closely tied with our bureaucrats--when it fails, how much of "us" shall go down with it? "Points to the economy."

If there is no division then there can be no accountablity. We play officials and we don't have a clue on what the outcomes will be--a laywers concept, to be expedient, is not a business term--to have value. One is myopic and the other is foreshadowing. Your mixing two novels with two different points-of-views. So, "Who is telling this story?"

[Jeff Paul Scam]

I have been attending Jeff Paul’s seminars for quite sometime. Even though I run a web graphics house I have plans of expanding my business for attracting clients to get their websites not only designed but also promoted.