The Chinese government is continuing its war on undesirable topics—at least on the Internet—by asking a number of domestic web sites to sign a self-censorship pact to keep the Internet clean, friendly, "healthy, and orderly." News and media organizations, ISPs, and other state-sanctioned web sites were all sent copies of the pact that asks them to promise to keep porn, violence, references to gambling, and "horror" (among other topics) off the 'Net for fear of corrupting young people. "Decadent, backward thoughts and culture must be boycotted by all," wrote China's Administration of Radio, Film and Television.

So far, eight major web sites in China signed the pact, according to Reuters, including the Xinhua news agency and the People's Daily newspaper. There is no indication of penalties for noncompliance (it is being passed off by the government as voluntary), although knowing China, it's best to fall in line the government's voluntary initiatives.

Still, it's unclear what the government is trying to achieve with this agreement, seeing as all state-controlled media is already under heavy censorship and everything accessed on the Internet in China is carefully filtered. The pact does, however, require the sites to delete user-uploaded content that doesn't comply with the strict standards for being "healthy."

China has never exactly been porn-friendly, but it began a more concentrated effort to eradicate it in the last year and a half. The former operator of the country's largest porn site was arrested and jailed, and the government then issued stern warnings against porn that perverts "China's young minds." The same goes for online gaming: beginning in July last year, kids who spend too much time gaming could lose half (or all) of their earned credits within the games. And of course, certain topics are always verboten, such as Nazi Germany, discussions about democracy, anything critical of Communism, and certain events in Chinese history (such as Tiananmen Square).

As China's massive population continues to go online in droves, it will become increasingly difficult to police the actions of each and every citizen sitting behind a computer. Still, China appears fully committed to what will be an unending battle to control what its citizens can access and see online.

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