Chinafotopress

It was obvious that pornography would find fertile ground in the anonymous nether regions of the Internet, and like the rest of the world China has been struggling with its ubiquity for over a decade. In China, pornography as a whole has been illegal since the victory of the Communist forces back in 1949 — when it was considered a by-product of "decadent capitalism" — but, more than ever, the 2010s look like the decade in which all-out war has been declared.

While China is not the only country to censor some or all dubious Internet sites — Australia, the UK and Singapore ......r Kuo uses the current analogy: "Anti-pornography campaigns on the Chinese Internet usually tend to have a ‘Whack-a-Mole' quality to them. You whack it down in one place, but somewhere in the dark recesses of the Internet, the mole pops up."

While the current clean up campaign may prove more effective than previous attempts, it is hard to believe that it will put even the smallest of dents in the quantity and availability of inappropriate and pornographic material on the web.