{"id":355,"date":"2014-05-15T23:53:12","date_gmt":"2014-05-15T23:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/?p=355"},"modified":"2014-05-15T23:57:19","modified_gmt":"2014-05-15T23:57:19","slug":"tienchi-martin-liao%ef%bc%9aanti-porn-and-clean-the-web-2014-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/tienchi-martin-liao%ef%bc%9aanti-porn-and-clean-the-web-2014-campaign","title":{"rendered":"Tienchi Martin-Liao\uff1aAnti-Porn and Clean the Web 2014 Campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anti-Porn and Clean the Web 2014 Campaign<\/strong><\/p>\n

by Tienchi Martin-Liao \/ May 7, 2014 \/<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nothing new in the East<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Photo-4-564x380\"<\/p>\n

Photograph by Ren Hang, who has been classified as a ‘pornographer’ by Chinese authorities.<\/p>\n

The Chinese authority can be crowned World Champion of launching campaigns out of political motives. It has inherited Mao Zedong\u2019s spirit of mass movement that was used to strike the so-called \u201cbull ghost and snake demon\u201d (meaning \u201cevil intellectuals\u201d) in the 50s and 60s. Mao predicted that every six or seven years those evil demons would jump out and disrupt the empire\u2019s peace. Today his descendants follow the doctrine, but mobilize the campaigns even more frequently.<\/p>\n

In April the State Internet Information Office, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the Ministry of Public Security decided that, from mid-April to November this year, a nationwide \u201cCleaning the Web 2014\u201d campaign of \u201canti-pornography, strike illegal publications\u201d will be launched as a special action.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In the past, \u201canti-yellow, strike BLACK\u201d was the slogan; yellow means pornography, black means all the dark and mafioso forces which threaten the public and private spheres. Now \u201cblack\u201d is replaced by \u201cillegal,\u201d referring to underground political and pornographic publications and online products. Sure enough, days later, a portal on China\u2019s most popular website sina.com was closed because of obscene porn-ebooks. The moral police found 20 pornographic books there along with four dirty video programs.<\/p>\n

Sina Corp, the owner of the website, published an online apology for this misstep and promised strict self-control in the future.<\/p>\n

For Sina.com the problem is not just the fine (up to 10 times the profit Sina Corp gained from the alleged smut) or the revocation of its online-publishing and audio-video program licenses; the real problem is the damage to its reputation. Now the 230 million registered daily users will know that their favorite website has been punished for indecency. The already \u201cfoot-binding\u201d state of press freedom has grown even tighter. This is another \u201ckill the chicken to scare the monkey\u201d strategy and now self-censorship will be practiced more voluntarily than ever.<\/p>\n

The first part of the anti-porn campaign has been carried out frequently, though irregularly, in recent years. China, with the largest population in the world, also has the largest sex industry. According to the US State Council\u2019s 2001 Human Rights report on China, there are over 10 million people working in the sex industry in China. In the southern city of Dongghuan alone there are over 100 thousand prostitutes. The February anti-porn operation hit the city\u2019s economy hard. After the cleanup, the city lost its vitality and prosperity. Hotels and entertainment businesses have stagnated.<\/p>\n

Still, Beijing is actually the real \u201cporn-capital.\u201d There are tens of thousands of sex workers, all hidden in hair salons, foot-bath houses, massage parlors, club houses, hotels, and inns.<\/p>\n

In China, sex is not only a lucrative business, it\u2019s also a part of political life. It\u2019s a symbol of power. The higher a cadre is in the party, the more mistresses he has. Zhou Yongkang, the former member of the Politburo Standing Committee and Secretary of the Central Political and Legislative Committee, who is now under investigation for abuse of power and corruption, is said to have 29 mistresses.<\/p>\n

The former railway minister, Liu Zhijun, who\u2019s been accused of the same crime as Zhou and sentenced to death with reprieve, had 18 sex partners, including Russian girls.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not unusual for public servants to invite colleagues to brothels with public money. Bribes from high officials consist not only of money, luxurious limousines, and real estate, but also of women. The new vocabulary for a female sex object, such as \u201csecond madam\u201d (ernai), \u201clittle three\u201d (xiaosan, or mistress), \u201cmissy\u201d (xiaojie), and \u201clittle cutie\u201d(xiaomi), are all connected with male officials, who maintain liaisons beside their marriages.<\/p>\n

President Xi Jinping has declared a fight against corruption since he\u2019s been in power, and the politicians mentioned above, Zhou, Liu, and some other high ranking officers, have either been dismissed, are under investigation, or in jail. Yet they are only handful of black sheep; there are still thousands more martens in the rotten system. While the new policy has intimidated lots of parasites, it\u2019s also a hard blow to the sex industry. Brothel madams and pimps complain that they\u2019ve lost their good customers\u2014the corrupt officials are truly ideal guests; they want sex and fun, don\u2019t do drugs, and they pay in cash. In the anti-porn campaign, the police have raided the common brothels and arrested the prostitutes and frequenters, but haven\u2019t touched the roots of evil. Those who steal the public\u2019s wealth and keep several concubines are not on the most-wanted list. That\u2019s why so many people are against this kind of hypocritical operation. It cannot prohibit the abnormal sex industry and lift the moral and ethics in the society, as long as the ramshackle system exists. As soon as the action is over, everything is business as usual.<\/p>\n

From Sampsonia Way Magazine
\nhttp:\/\/www.sampsoniaway.org\/fearless-ink\/tienchi-martinliao\/2014\/05\/07\/anti-porn-and-clean-the-web-2014-campaign\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anti-Porn and Clean the Web 2014 Campaig … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[109,1348,108],"views":4542,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":358,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions\/358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}