China Closes 1,600 "Internet Bars"

Kujila writes "According to a Chinese Reuters article, China has closed close to 1,600 "Internet Bars" (probably the equivalent of 'Internet Cafes' stateside) and inflicted up to $12.1 million worth of fines upon the establishment owners. The Internet Bars were apparently letting young children pay to play violent and adult-only PC games. China inspected a grand-total of 1.8 million bars, and ordered about 18,000 of those bars to "to stop operation for rectification," It's estimated that 18% of China's Internet population is composed of minors."

I have an idea

[PacoTaco (577292)]

Someone needs to start a "shut down by China" list so the rest of us can find the good stuff.

Re:I have an idea

[gustgr (695173)]

I belive slashdot should create a Topic called "China", with a little red flag as Icon. Last month we have seen a lot of China's stories, indeed most of them are about China shutting something down.

That's less than point one percent 0.1 %

[by Anonymous Coward]

While all I see is all this cringing about how horrid and totalitarian this is, it is easy to see from the figures that this is less than point one percent of the bars they checked which was a staggering 1.8 million. Holy smokes. Even if they just sell a coke or two, there's some commerce going on there.
And what were these guys shut down for? For allowing children to play adult games in public. Oh, that would be fine in the US right? Bullshit.
Now I think it is totally hypocritcal for Americans to get on a soap box about such a miniscule figure when the US puts content filters on millions of PCs in schools and libraries that prevent birth control and alternative political information from reaching students. And the US shuts down net cafes with just as much gusto as the Chinese. The double stardard is attrocious.
But you have to wonder. I mean didn't we just see an article in which hundreds of Slashdot posters defended in public the use of the term "ricer". Clearly there are some real double standards about what is appropriate when it comes to anything Asian.
William Randolf Hearst would be proud of all you asian haters making fools of yourselves in public. But remember, what you reap is what you sow.

Re:That's less than point one percent 0.1 %

[canadian_right (410687)]

This an excellent post and to see it modded down as a troll baffles me.

Can someone without a pro-usa axe to grind please mod this up.

Re:That's less than point one percent 0.1 %

[Money for Nothin' (754763)]

And what were these guys shut down for? For allowing children to play adult games in public. Oh, that would be fine in the US right? Bullshit.

Wrong. We have allowed children to play CounterStrike in Internet cafes for years.

And the US shuts down net cafes with just as much gusto as the Chinese. The double stardard is attrocious.

Oh? Prove it. I've *never* heard of an Internet cafe in the U.S. being shut down by the government because children were playing violent computer games. (they may have bee

Taught there.

[PsiPsiStar (95676)]

I can't find which games, in particular, were banned. The original article is pretty poor.

Here's a slightly longer perspective.
http://english.people.com.cn/200205/ 17/eng20020517 _95869.shtml

I was an English teacher in Nanjing from 1 year ago to about 6 months ago.

If you'd been to China recently, you'd know it isn't at all socialistic. Newspapers don't paint a very clear picture of things. It's somewhere between oligarchic, fascist and anarchic. But it's not socialistic at all. It used to be Maoist, distinct from Marxist Lenninist and also distinctly different from the socialistic governments of Europe. But China has changed a lot recently.

Anyway, if you're 16 you can do whatever you want in a netbar. Watch porn. Play CS. Whatever.

It's fair that the previous poster brought up the notion of standards. The US has to live by the same standards it applies to other nations. In China there's no age limit on alcohol or cigarette purchases. In the US, there is. Does this make the US a totalitarian state? I don't think it does. What has happened here is as 'totalitarian' as a rigid enforcement of the US movie rating system. And it's hard to tell from the article what the situation is on the ground. Sometimes, 'crackdowns' are ignored by business owners, who comply as superficially as possible. It's hard to tell how seriously people are taking this.

Of course, the US is more tolerant of violence than some cultures. Other non Judeo-Christian cultures are a lot more tolerant of sex.

Re:Taught there.

[Money for Nothin' (754763)]

Anyway, if you're 16 you can do whatever you want in a netbar. Watch porn. Play CS. Whatever.

In that respect, yes, China is less totalitarian than the U.S., as they allow things like porn at a lower age than we do...

But how about free-speech restrictions [cnn.com] (can you talk about Tianenman there?)? Forced prison-labor camps? Childbirth restrictions (1 child per woman, last I checked)? These are not the policies of a non-totalitarian society.

In China there's no age limit on alcohol or cigarette purchases.

Re:Taught there.

[PsiPsiStar (95676)]

First... people don't typically go to net bars to 'spread anti-governmental messages.' I don't know how hard the government would work to track you if you did, provided you weren't trying to organize some kind of protest. Criticism on the local level is just fine. You don't want to threaten the boys in Beijing, of course, but Beijing is a long ways away from most things and not really a very present force in the average persons life. It's a felony, for that matter, to threaten the US president, even as a jo

So what !

[shancock (89482)]

That is .009% of all the bars checked. Maybe they were selling booze or crack also. Who knows. I'm sure .009% of any 1.8 million sites anywhere may need 'rectification'. This is much ado about nothing, unless we are concerned about the civil rights of minors in China not being able to play some video games. This is in China, where there are many more serious human right problems than this.

Again....so what!

Re:So what !

[saforrest (184929)]

This is much ado about nothing, unless we are concerned about the civil rights of minors in China not being able to play some video games.

Well, and the ability of the population at large to access information freely through 'internet bars'.

Does nobody here even think of the possibility that these adult games might be being used as a pretext for a crackdown on free access to information?

Re:So what !

[angel'o'sphere (80593)]

To clarify: China had two revolutions ... but thats not my point.
My point is: when the colonial war/revolution in USA happend, the USA allready was developed.
When the first revolution in China happend, China was an Empire. That was 100 years ago.
In my eyes China hs now still 100 years left until it has reached the state of civilization USA had in 1789. 1789 was not that much democratc IMHO. It was still wilderness where a few people where allowed to vote.
That situation we now have in China. What do you expe

I always make stupid mistakes but...

[cubeleo (782919)]

18000/1800000 = .01 .01 * 100 = 1% Isn't that right? I'd say 1% is a lot more significant. More than a few outliers. Less of a "struck by lightning" or "winning the lottery" type proportion.

Some Quick Figures & Bonus News

[The-Bus (138060)]

1,350,000,000 Chinese. (Give or take.)

18,000,000 bars checked. (One for every 75 people.) That's not bad. That would be the equivalent of 3.9 million bars in the U.S.*

18,000 bars need "rectification." That probably means they were fined and told to do X, Y, and Z. Only 1% of bars needed to be rectified. These bars remained open.

1,600 bars were completely shut down. That means out of all the bars, 0.0089% were shut down. One out of every 1,000 were fined/rectified. 1 out of every 11,250 were shut down. Wh

Good movement from China's Gov.

[gustgr (695173)]

i completelly agree with China's Government behavior. I support children and teenagers having contact and learning with the computer, but playing violent games is far from what the word learning really means.

This young kids should be learning to read source code and hack it, or how to use the internet to do interesting research. Playing this kind of game just alienate the kids making them dumbasses (all right, I know slashdot is also alienating and prejuciail to my health, but I can't avoid it).

Re:Good movement from China's Gov.

[antifoidulus (807088)]

There is a group of people who are supposed to do all the things you want the Chinese government to do, they are called PARENTS! You don't need the government to do their job.

Re:Good movement from China's Gov.

[gustgr (695173)]

If this group of people could solve anything effectivelly we wouldn't need to worry about drug and alchool problems, just to mention a few. Children do not know what is good for them, and if the parents cannot handle them I believe the Gov. should take the responsabilities.

Re:Good movement from China's Gov.

[KublaiKhan (522918)]

The government should *not* take the responsibility. It never works.

A better idea would be parenting classes, offered freely, and perhaps mandatory for first tiem parents.
After all, before there was the nice government to take care of us, how the hell did kids get raised, anyway?

Re:Good movement from China's Gov.

[by Anonymous Coward]

Children do not know what is good for them

Neither do most adults, as a matter of fact. Maybe we should pass laws saying adults can't play "violent video games". You guys wouldn't mind that, would you? Additionally, I see absolutely nothing wrong with children playing violent games. Violence is a part of the human psyche and, if expressed in a harmless way, can be very beneficial. In any case, the last thing I want for myself or my children is some prudish government telling us what we can and can't pla

Re:Good movement from China's Gov.

[Hatta (162192)]

Children do not know what is good for them, and if the parents cannot handle them I believe the Gov. should take the responsabilities.

You think the government knows what's best for them?

NewsFlash: The government only knows what is best for IT.

Re:Good movement from China's Gov.

[mutewinter (688449)]

Your telling me that you think the government has "effectivelly" solved drug and "alchool" problems?

Re:Good movement from China's Gov.

[owlstead (636356)]

Maybe we should learn them how to write first. My apologies if you are dyslexic, but even then you could have someone look at your signature first.

Re:Good movement from China's Gov.

[Megane (129182)]

This young kids should be learning to read source code and hack it, or how to use the internet to do interesting research.

Absolutely! We need to carpet-bomb China with Gentoo install CDs immediately! Then they can use their bandwidth for something useful, like downloading the latest and greatest source code, instead of silly talk talk stuff.

Re:Good movement from China's Gov.

[ctr2sprt (574731)]

Or they might have shut down the bars because people were using them to express pro-democracy viewpoints on blogs, bypass the Great Firewall, etc., and the whole "save the children" story is a complete fabrication.

Don't take anything China says at face value. This is not a free country we're talking about here. They release only that information which makes them look good to other countries, and if they haven't got any suitable information to release, they will make something up.

Must be because they are using microsoft

[egnop (531002)]

I remember Chinese government promotes Linux

http://slashdot.org/articles/03/11/18/0219249.shtm l?tid=102&tid=126&tid=163&tid=187 [slashdot.org]

This is news?

[Ann Elk (668880)]

Wouldn't the exact same thing happen in other countries (including the U.S.) if businesses were making adult-only games available to children?

Re:This is news?

[a_hofmann (253827)]

The article states that 1.8 million internet bars have been inspected between February and August, of which 1600 where shut down.

That's a quite staggering number of inspections, and it leaves me wondering about the vast resources at hand for governmental control in China.

On topic, I don't think such measures to be effective. Restrictive law cannot replace proper education, as people can always work around law.

Not to be flamebait or anything....

[KublaiKhan (522918)]

But it seems that this is what happens when a country is allowed any sort of say in what constitutes "acceptable" use of anything. It's more or less well known that China's been firewalling off various chunks of the internet for years [ can't let those subversive ideas in, y'know, the citizenry might get a notion to revolt ] and this would just be more of the same.

Keep in mind, however, there are some parts of the United States that have a similar mindset. I mind me of the Maine library association....there were grants given out to give them internet access, but with a catch, that they had to have filtering software installed. Of course, many people cried "censorship!" and let slip the dogs of protest, but in the end, the puritans fought harder to keep all the corrupting influences from our youth, etc, etc.

Forgive my rambling...I'm not caffeinated yet. ^^;

1.8 million internet bars

[bani (467531)]

china's population is approx. 1.3 billion.

1.8 million internet bars means approx. 1 internet bar per 721 population.

to put that in perspective, a city of 30,000 would have 41 internet bars...

i'd like to know what counts as an "internet bar" though. anyone know what a typical chinese "internet bar" is like?

Re:1.8 million internet bars

[Cyberblah (140887)]

I doubt it was "typical", but when I was in Xian this summer I saw a rent-a-terminal type internet place (there was no bar or food being sold, although there was a KFC next door) on the bottom floor of a large computer market. There were dozens of machines, about half of them were in use, and most of them were playing either Counterstrike or Diablo, and a few were plying Warcraft 3.

Re:1.8 million internet bars

[spaceyak (812927)]

Yeah, that is what we call "internet bar" in China. It's ture that most PCs there are used for playing games, CS and some korean diablo-like games. I can always see children play games there although it is unlawful...

Re:1.8 million internet bars

[chenyu (134524)]

A typical internet bar is a loud video arcade where a lot of teenagers are playing MMORG's and downloading mp3's. When you log into one of those machines, you get this huge menu of all of the games that you can play, and they are really cheap , (about 10 cents/hour).

There is no way one could operate in the United States. Almost all of the software used in the internet bars is pirated, and anyone in the US who tried to set an internet bar up in the United States would get instantly shut down for copyrigh

Nice pretext...

[by Anonymous Coward]

With the dictators in Beijing bent on preventing access to independent (western) news, having smut as a pretext to close down internet cafes is pretty welcome. Probably the crime was actually to let customers read the New York Times. In China communists eyes, that is high treason. After all, they have their Great Firewall to prevent access to porn, haven't they?

Re:Nice pretext...

[nomadic (141991)]

With the dictators in Beijing bent on preventing access to independent (western) news, having smut as a pretext to close down internet cafes is pretty welcome. Probably the crime was actually to let customers read the New York Times. In China communists eyes, that is high treason. After all, they have their Great Firewall to prevent access to porn, haven't they?

It's not about communism; China really isn't communist anymore. They're extremely capitalistic, and also extremely authoritarian, with an unhealt

Re:Nice pretext...

[PsiPsiStar (95676)]

>you think Slashdot is accessible from within the >Great Firewall? Any Chinese readers out there?

It was when I lived there 6 months ago.
Things can change, day to day.

Doesn't sound much special

[grumbel (592662)]

While 1'600 sounds like a pretty huge number, the closing and the fines itself doesn't sound so much special if it is really true that they let children play adult games. After all in germany similar things[1] have happened and I am sure that if young children would use internet cafe to watch porn the US authorities wouldn't be much pleased either.

[1] http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/33234

You believe them?

[HangingChad (677530)]

If you believe the official news coming out of China, then you probably also believe Fox News really is fair and balanced and that the new Iraqi Information Minister, Dick Cheney, is telling the truth about what's going on in Iraq.

We don't know why they shut them down. More likely because some of the users were finding their way around the government approved web sites.

Question...

[KrackHouse (628313)]

How do you say Patriot Act in Chinese?

Two wrongs don't make a right

[wheelbarrow (811145)]

There is a reaction that quickly happens every time Slashdot has an article on China's suppression of free speech and association. Apologists for China always trot out past transgressions committed by the USA government. How is that relevant? Does a bad act comitted by the USA give China a 'free' bad act? Aren't Tianenman Square and Kent State both wrong on fundamental moral principle? Why would anyone use one to excuse the other?

I think most people are uncomfortable making moral judgements these days. I'm not. I judge this action by China to be wrong. This is true whether you hate George Bush or not.

WTF?

[Epcoatl (822683)]

This is my first post, so please gentle. I am Chinese-American who emigrated to the US at a very young age and has since then returned as a study abroad student. I have been in many a "wangba" [Chinese for internet cafe] and I want to put all of this non-sense in perspective: 1.)Dissidents don't usually frequent wangbas because doing something politically insensitive in a wangba doesn't just endanger yourself, it endangers the owners and potentially the other patrons. 2.)It's mostly kids at these wangbas, doing exactly what the government says it's cracking down on: downloading porn and playing CS [and they were scary good at the latter; I'm a fairly competent CS player, but in this tiny ass village in Southwest China without even a single paved road I got my ass handed back to me by these 13 year old kids] 3.)The Great Firewall is about as effective as the regular Great Wall was, which is to say, it's not terribly effective. I would have to say I've been to two dozen different wangbas all over China, and it's hit or miss whether or not I can access the so called prohibited sites. New York Times was okay in most places, ditto with CNN. All the Tibetan Independence sites [I tried out of curiosity] were much more frequently blocked, and Amnesty Int'l is similarily more difficult to access. This leads into my fourth point... 4.)There are 1.8 million [that's million] of these wangbas all over China. 1.8 million. The way the Chinese government is set up, with it's extremly heirarchical (sp?), top-down, Central to Regional to Provincial to Local structure, the only way the government can manage to keep track of all of those 1.8 million internet bars is through one of those ubiquitious government "anti-something" campaigns, and even then only for a very short period of time before the various levels of the heiarchy return back to their normal state of resistance/grudging cooperation with each other. Basically, not only was the number of 18K bars shut down ridiculously small, there's a good chance, now that the government anti-smut/anti-video game violence/anti whatever campaign is over, that a good deal of those bars shut down would open themselves up, with the implicit approval of the local authorities, without so much as an iota of "rectification" carried out. This is just the way the Chinese government works, in all it's magnificently inefficient glory. 5.)Contrary to the generally libertarian impulse here in the US, I would have to say that a vast majority of the Chinese people would expect the government to creat and enforce morality laws. Whether you agree with it or not, or if you think that that isn't the "natural" and correct way for a government to act, it's what the Chinese expect the government to do for them. They have a very different set of implicit expectations for what a government does and what it's responsible for, and especially what its role in society is. I haven't been closely following this latest anti-violence/anti-smut campaign very closely, but I would hazard a guess that the campaign was mostly either received with a lukewarm welcome or total indifference. If the government goes over the bounds and uses this campaign as an excuse to shut down some wangbas or other internet meeting places for allowing access to politically sensitive information, then a great majority of the population would see that as an acceptable trade-off for dealing with the preceived problem of underage access to porn and violent games. This is simply how the society and the culture are in China. I'm not saying if it's right or wrong, but I'm just saying that's reality, and in reality, [here comes the really overextended metaphor] a boiling hot sulphur spring might seem like perfect hell for you but I bet the thermophile organisms that thrive there can't imagine any other way to live.

Re:pardon my scepticism..

[arose (644256)]

I hear there is a considerable number of people in Chine these days...

Re:Nothing has changed

[jgaynor (205453)]

A huge nation with a corrupt, fascist, evil government run by one small party of old men who are all afraid of what would happen to them if they lost power.

Wait which one - China or the US?

Re:Nothing has changed

[nomadic (141991)]

Wait which one - China or the US?

Yes.

Re:Nothing has changed

[Pave Low (566880)]

A huge nation with a corrupt, fascist, evil government run by one small party of old men who are all afraid of what would happen to them if they lost power.

Wait which one - China or the US?

Why don't you try shouting that statement out in Tianamen Square and then at the Statue of Liberty, and find out the difference?

Re:Nothing has changed

[jgaynor (205453)]

Can I shout that at the statue of liberty? Or has that been closed for another three years out of fear of terrurrrrr?

Re:Nothing has changed

[ahfoo (223186)]

Well, it's merely an amusing anecdote not meant to demonstrate anything much one way or the other, but this is true.
A year before the protest and massacre in Tien An Men, I visited Beijing as a backpack tourist and went to Tien An Men square where I proceeded, along with some British accomplices, to do hand stands and various low end acrobatics in an attempt to attract attention.
Well, it worked great. In seconds we had a huge crowd. It wasn't really that we were so impressive, but more that people wanted to see what everybody else was gawking at and the crowd itself was what was drawing the crowd.
So, the higher up cops --there's actually many, many different levels of cops in Mainland China with only some actually having any authority-- came in and pulled the crowd apart and told us we were being bad and not to do it again.
That's it. That's all that happened. We were clearly trouble makers, but we weren't arrested or even hassled.
So, yeah what happened in that same sqauare a year later was a terrible tragedy, but Mainland China might not be as scarry as you think.
On the other hand, I've been called names by cops in the US over the loudspeaker of their partol cars and when I get pulled over, I regularly have my car searched from top to bottom looking for drugs when the stop was allegedly for things like a bent license plate or some such nonsense.

Re:Nothing has changed

[DonGar (204570)]

I've heard that argument before. People choose to match the profile, so it's their fault. Words only spoken by someone that's never matched the profile.

I'm white, very wasp, and I grew up in a medium well-to-do household. I'm not a preppie, but I look like my background, and pretty much always have. I don't get bothered by the police unless I'm speeding. Even then, they are polite and reasonable when dealing with me (and I to them).

In college I got to be good friends with a black guy (large muscular build

Re:Nothing has changed

[Chundra (189402)]

That's not really a fair comparison. Change Statue of Liberty to White House maybe. That's a bit closer. Of course, if you start raving like that in front of the White House you'll be whisked away by some unfriendly guys with sunglasses...especially if your skin is brown.

Anyone in the DC area want to try it and report back?

Re:Nothing has changed

[Richard_at_work (517087)]

Of course, Tianamen Square could never happen in the US, now could it?

Kent State University - May 4 1970. National Guard opens fire on Students protesting the Vietnam War. 4 Dead, 9 Injured.

Jackson State University - May 15 1970. Police open fire on a protesting crowd. 2 Dead, 12 Injured.

Just because the number of dead is smaller, do not dismiss this. When threatened, Governments will fight back.

Re:Nothing has changed

[sparlitup (694289)]

Evil... tsk, you christians and your moral absolutism....

How typical. Well don't forget the future of the US economy is increasingly dependant on this 'corrupt, fascist, evil government' (look how many western companies now have a substantial portion of their manufacturing base in China), not to mention that this is also the country with most favoured nation trading status with the US.
It's certainly no oasis of freedom, but the good thing is that they can regulate stuff like this when it needs to be done without any interfering from dodgy lobby groups. Democracy is overrated anyway :)

That was the last witchhunt but one

[kahei (466208)]

'Video nasties' were an 80's panic; the idea was that horror videos would corrupt youth. Please get you witchhunts, panics, and scares in the right order!

Since the video nasty, penny dreadful, sinful rock'n'roll song, three-volume novel (blamed for leading young ladies astray in times past) and comic book scares have all been and gone with amazingly little impact on anything, I think it is reasonable to have a fairly relaxed response to the current computer games scare :)