China starts new ‘Crackdown’ on ‘Net Porn

If they can get Google and Yahoo to play by their rules, what’s next for the keepers of the Chinese Internet? How about a crackdown on Internet porn, which has “perverted China’s young minds,” according to a state news agency quoted in this hot-off-the-tubes AP report?

Without knowing what tactics China will have at its disposal to ferret out Internet porn (though we are guessing there will be no shortage of state employees willing to help find the offending material), we will cautiously bet that it might take something more like a 5-year-plan to finish the job, instead of the “six-month campaign” quoted in the AP story.

Maybe the six-month campaign is just a follow-up on China’s move late last year to put a leading porn-site entrepreneur behind bars for life. While we’re not passing judgment here on whether or not porn has any socially redeeming value, we will note that what might get you jailed in China is seen here these days as just another event to spike traffic, a.k.a. business as usual.