Houston Community News >> China Plans to Censor Internet
4/23/2007-- Chinese President
Hu Jintao on Monday launched a campaign to rid the country’s sprawling Internet
of “unhealthy” content and make it a springboard for Communist Party doctrine,
state television reported.
With Hu presiding, the Communist Party Politburo — its 24-member inner council —
discussed cleaning up the Internet, state television reported. The meeting
promised to place the often unruly medium more firmly under propaganda controls.
“Development and administration of Internet culture must stick to the direction
of socialist advanced culture, adhere to correct propaganda guidance,” said a
summary of the meeting read on the news broadcast.
“Internet cultural units must conscientiously take on the responsibility of
encouraging development of a system of core socialist values.”
The meeting was far from the first time China has sought to rein in the
Internet. In January, Hu made a similar call to “purify” it, and there have been
many such calls before.
But the announcement indicated that Hu wants ever tighter controls as he braces
for a series of political hurdles and seeks to govern a generation of young
Chinese for whom Mao Zedong’s socialist revolution is a hazy history lesson.
“Consolidate the guiding status of Marxism in the ideological sphere,” the party
meeting urged, calling for more Marxist education on the Internet.
The Communist Party is preparing for a congress later this year that is set to
give Hu another five-year term and open the way for him to choose eventual
successors. In 2008, Beijing hosts the Olympic Games, when the party’s economic
achievements will be on display, along with its political and media controls.
In 2006, China’s Internet users grew by 26 million, or 23.4 percent, year on
year, to reach 137 million, Chinese authorities have estimated.
(Contributed by MSNBC)