Thanks to a post at China Letter, I see that China Daily has printed an opinion article that actually takes the CCP to task for banning minors from using Internet cafes over the summer.
The decision to bar youth from Internet cafes deprives the right of young people with no access to personal computers to make use of legitimate business operations.
A better way to protect China’s youth and at the same time respect their right to Internet access is to strengthen control on the cyber content provided by public Internet outlets. It is technically feasible to use software to block pornographic or excessively violent content.
Strengthened regulation always incurs costs. It means the government will have to spend more resources than simply issuing an all-round ban.
But it may be a better solution.
It’s kind ot tame, and it doesn’t touch the far bigger and more controversial issue of the government’s paranoid obsession with controlling what citizens do on the Net. But the writer is absolutely correct — the summer ban sounds like a really bad idea. And I doubt if the young people are going to be very appreciative of the CCP’s concern for their well being.
1
By imron
I don’t know if this is that positive a thing… I mean the article is basically drumming up support for the government to spend more money on controlling and restricting the net.
Personally, I think keeping some of these kids out of internet cafes for the summer will do them some good – exercise, sunlight etc 😉 but increasing surveillance, and strengthening government control of the net will harm everyone.
June 23, 2004 @ 5:52 pm | Comment
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By richard
I saw it as a very, very mild criticism, and I think your points are very well taken.
June 23, 2004 @ 6:31 pm | Comment