China’s sexual silence
Alice Hutton
In the dark: is China's "clean-up" of the internet the start of something more sinister?
By the time politicians and persons of indisputable guanxi—those “connected” in Chinese society—gather in Tiananmen Square tomorrow to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, innumerable sexual health and HIV websites will already have been shut down. During a summer of race riots and “organised forgetting” the Great Fire Wall went into over drive in an effort to “clean up” their online presence in time for the scrutiny of the world’s media.
On 1st July the Chinese ministry of health issued a decree to systematically start banning public access to websites with sexual health content—unless you are a medical professional or scientific researcher. The rules appear intentionally vague. What exactly is covered by “scientific research” is ambiguous. The penalties, however, are crystal clear: a fine of up to 30,000 RMB (£2,772), or in some cases prison.
In the same month, the government also announced plans to introduce Green Dam onto all new computers: a software which automatically filters out any sex-related content in an internet search. This includes medical and HIV websites, chat rooms on health channels, and the highly-publicised pornography which China Daily, that bastion of truth, claims is poisoning the minds of China’s children.
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