No More Porn, China

BEIJING, China shut down 44,000 Web sites and arrested 868 people for Internet pornography last year, state media said Wednesday. Their public ministry launched a campaign against Internet pornography last year because young were getting too much involved. Nearly 2,000 people involved in Internet pornography activities also were penalized, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Recently, 33 people (Including performers and managers) were arrested in connection with a Web site that allowed customers, mainly in Taiwan, to view live sex shows filmed at 12 separate locations in the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai, seizing Cash, computers and film equipment.

China forbids pornography and paid sex in virtually all forms, although prostitution is common and the government’s Internet police struggle to block pornographic Web sites based abroad. China’s online population has soared to 210 million people and could surpass the United States this year to become the world’s biggest, the official China Internet Network Information Center said earlier this month. The government will increasingly concentrate on Web sites that have audio or video, blogging or send information to cell phones, Xinhua said.