China bans new internet cafes for a year

Fearful of soaring internet addiction and juvenile crime, China has banned the opening of new internet cafes this year, state media reported on Tuesday. ‘In 2007, local governments must not sanction the opening of new internet bars,’ Xinhua news agency on Tuesday quoted a directive jointly released by 14 government departments, including the Ministry of Culture, as saying. The notice comes as lawmakers at China’s annual session of parliament, the National People’s Congress, called for stricter regulations to keep teenagers away from internet cafes, which are often seen in China as hotbeds of juvenile crime. There are currently about 113,000 internet cafes and bars in China, Xinhua said, citing the Ministry of Information Industry. China has banned minors from cybercafes and levies heavy fines on operators who defy regulations in a bid to curb soaring rates of addiction that have accompanied the rapid spread of the internet in recent years. Last year, a report from the China National Children’s Centre, a government think-tank, said that 13 per cent of China’s 18m internet users under 18 were internet addicts. (Reuters,March 06, 2007)

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>