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China Freezes New Internet Cafes

by Terrence O'Brien on June 5, 2007 at 12:02 PM

Chinese Internet Cafe
The latest offensive in Chinese president Hu Jintao's hilarious mission to "clean up Internet culture," (read: censor it) is a freeze on the licensing new Internet cafes. At the same time, the communist government is investigating the illegal renting of licenses and the failure of cafes to properly register its users.

After the U.S., China is home to the world's second biggest online population and is projected to strip us of that Internet gold medal within the next two years. Though the government somewhat encourages the use of the Web for business and education, it's a longtime offender when it comes to censorship, even completely blocking access to Google at one point. In fact, the only reason the search giant was let back into the country was because it censored itself for Chinese users.

China's defense for its strict governance of the Internet is that it believes young people are being corrupted by gambling, porn and violent video games. And no doubt a little bit of freedom of speech, as well.


From Engadget

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Tags: censorship, China, Internet, web

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