China has left the repressive shackles of Communism but vestiges of state control are hard to shake off. One of these lingering practices is censorship. Fairly recently, China censored the information on the melamine tainted milk scandal which government authorities had known even before the Beijing Olympics. For fear of tarnished image that could wipe out the fervor of the Olympic season, it waited till after the international games before the issue of melamine was even heard of.

Since last month, China has again been wielding its flair for censorship, this time on the World Wide Web. It has earlier clamped down on and blocked the websites of the BBC and the New York Times. Now, it accuses Google for displaying pornography and vulgar content. China earlier claimed that it had alerted Google about its many links to immoral sites, but according to state officials, Google has not lifted a finger to address the issue.

If the trend of its warnings being ignored continues, China threatens to punish and even close down the sites. The country feels strongly against vulgar content because it claims that these deeply harm the health of the youth. The government has responded to the clamor among parents in China to save their children from such vulgar trend. Is China just dreaming that it can lock horns with something whose nature defies the boundaries of geography? Surely, it knows what the World Wide Web really means.

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Via Inquirer