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

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

That's less than point one percent 0.1 %

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.

Taught there.

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.

Nothing has changed

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.

Re:Nothing has changed

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

Wait which one - China or the US?

Yes.

Re:Nothing has changed

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

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

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

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

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 :)

So what !

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!

I always make stupid mistakes but...

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.

Good movement from China's Gov.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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

rectification...

"Rectification" is a very scary word

Not to be flamebait or anything....

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

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

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

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...

Adult Sites?

More likely young students were reading about interesting things like voting.

pardon my scepticism..

but did they really check 18000 outlets. Thats quite a considerable number.

Nice pretext...

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?

China Icon

I suggest that for an icon to represent the topic of China, we create an almagamation of subjects.

• Lack of freedom of speech
• Lack of freedom of assembly
• Lack of freedom of thought
• Lack of freedom of movement
• ...etc...

In general, create a hodge-podge of images that convey the impression of a dreary hell-hole of existence.

Young and their vices

Perhaps these kids shouldn't be doing a bunch of coffee either?

1.8 million internet cafes? WTF?

You've got to be kidding me? I dought there are more than 100 full time internet cafes in the entire US. Not counting the 6 that are opening and closing in any particular state at any giving moment. I've only ever seen one stable one in the entire down town Minneapolis area, and that one only makes money because they have a bakery.

18% minors?

That's sort of scary if you think about it, as the rest of the world matures, they will be poised to take over due to the sheer quantity of 'young adults' in their prime condition to fight a war.

Doesn't sound much special

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?

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.

Is it me?

Or is China starting to get worst all of a sudden? The Chinese people need to stand up for themselves. A revolution is in order.

Sounds painful for those involved

If I was rectified by the Chinese Government, it could be quite uncomfortable. No sitting for months for those Cyber Bar proprietors.

Not trolling, just having a laugh people. Sounds like a nasty situation for the Chinese populace.

Euphemism

China inspected a grand-total of 1.8 million bars, and ordered about 18,000 of those bars to "to stop operation for rectification"

That's Chinese for "bend over and spread 'em."

Hey, its their country

They get to make their own rules of what is morally acceptable and what isn't.

We don't have the right to dictate our concept of morality to them. ( nor does it work in reverse.. )

Let them make their own decisions. Now, when you discuss the fact they restrict others from leaving that don't agree, we have something to talk about, but we don't have a right to demand they follow our values....

Question...

How do you say Patriot Act in Chinese?

Two wrongs don't make a right

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.

Stop pushing democracy

Don't you get it, this is exactly the reason why countries around the world dislike the United States.

Democracy is good, but its not for everyone.

If you're forcing democracy down its throat, you're only gonna end up harming yourself. Just like how the Bush Administration is trying to push democracy in the Middle-East.

The people are not ready yet!

Other forms of government can be just as effective. So they are different, well thats culture for you!

And China' ain't bad, they are opening up, I've been in China for over a month and it feels just like home, you get to eat, sleep, shop, work, freedom to choose your jobs, buy materialistic things. What more?

China has been living with far worst government for over 2-5k years now (read: Monarchy; Emporers) and if you take a step back, Communism is actually much less strict.

Let the country run itself.

18% minors, the rest...

"It's estimated that 18% of China's Internet population is composed of minors."

... and the remaining 82% are spam relays ;)

Republic view of this

Bush and Cheney are reading this article and saying to themselves "Why can't we do this?"

Here in the US, it is illegal in some states to have oral sex with your wife. Some conservatives, like Ann Coulter, believe that it is perfectly fine to pass a law that tells someone how to act based on her religious beliefs. And judging by the landslide victory the gay marriage amendment had here in Lousiana, there are plenty people who feel the same way.

Do the country a favor this Tuesday: Don't vote for Bush!

WTF?

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.

China has 1.8 Million internet bars?

That's nearly one Internet bar for every 500 people in China! That would be the equivalent of 560000 Starbucks joints in the US. There are less than 30,000 starbucks shops in the WORLD, let alone more than half a million in the US.

On a political note...

I've been playing violent video games since I was ten. My father raised me to know the difference between reality and fantasy. I think my first FPS was Duke Nukem 3D. The government, any government, can't protect children from bad parenting forever. At some point, all governments must realize that these censorship programs for everything from erotica to swear words wouldn't be necessary, if they promoted programs to inform parents on successful methods for raising children. There is only so much the government can do the shield children from bad parenting.

Not surprising...

...in these countries... ;-(
(from http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=11715/ [rsf.org])

"Reporters Without Borders announces its third annual worldwide index of press freedom. Such freedom is threatened most in East Asia (with North Korea at the bottom of the entire list at 167th place, followed by Burma 165th, China 162nd, Vietnam 161st and Laos 153rd) and the Middle East (Saudi Arabia 159th, Iran 158th, Syria 155th, Iraq 148th).

In these countries, an independent media either does not exist or journalists are persecuted and censored on a daily basis. Freedom of information and the safety of journalists are not guaranteed there. (...) But there are plenty of other black spots around the world for press freedom. Cuba (in 166th place) is second only to China as the biggest prison for journalists, with 26 in jail (China has 27). Since spring last year, these 26 independent journalists have languished in prison after being given sentences of between 14 and 27 years. "

Governing a large nation

Governing a large nation is like cooking a small fish

Re:Hmmmmmm

Heheh, very good point. It's also a nice insight into what sort of people follow the 'moral' "Don't let your kids play unapproved video games or leave their cage." which is now the official umbrella-term used by all murderous rampaging governments, and isn't just for violent zealots anymore.

That was the last witchhunt but one

'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 :)

Re:Smells Like Republicans

Exactly Karl Rove is using his dark mage powers to infuse Bush with the souls of Stalin and Mao.

Re:China should cut down on the SPAM(== $$$)

If they cracked down on spam, they would lose all the hard currency they get from spammers in the West. This currency helps defray the cost of the powers that be to remain in power while the rest of China remains in various states of oppression and suppression.

Pink contracts are pink contracts no matter where in the world they are agreed to.

I'll just continue to delete my spam automatically with my own software [cf13.com] as I have been since July, 2004.

Re:Good for China! Bring this here.

Should the government have the power to stop them? Would the cure be better than the disease?

Re:Good for China! Bring this here.

I know this has "troll" written all over it, but just in case it's not, can you do three things, please?

1. Operationally define "moral character".

2. Show evidence to support your claim that the "moral character", as you defined it in #1, of our youth is being destroyed.

3. Show evidence for how the destruction of our youth's "moral character" is a direct result of violent video games.

Anecdotal evidence, being very unscientific and misleading, does not count for numbers 2 and 3.

Thanks.

Re:In...

USA the people vote in dictators!!!