China Blames Web for Youth Crime

Reports out of Beijing blame the Internet for youth crime in China. Police spokesmen cited the negative influences of online pornography and violent content as a causal element in youth crime there. According to Wu Heping a spokesman for police in Beijing, recent cases involving youths show a disproportionate number to have been corrupted by online filth.

China has begun a crackdown on Internet porn recently and according to their figures almost 80 percent of young criminals have been seduced and influenced by the Internet. According to a Reuters story via Yahoo!, Wu said that it pains people very much to know that crimes are committed by people corrupted by obscene pictures and images.

China announced a campaign against Internet pornography also aimed at fraud, illegal lotteries and “rumor spreading” in an effort to protect China's young people from Internet evils. Last year China's Web porn king was sentenced to life imprisonment by Chinese courts. Pornography was virtually non-existent under the rule of Chairman Mao, but new reforms in China did not just open the gateway for positive change as social reforms loosened controls.

China's “cyber police” now patrol the Web in search of unfavorable content, but more often than not they are looking for politically oriented evidence than pornographic violators. No statistical data was cited by the official and this may just be a correlative propaganda to support China's increasing pressure on Internet content, but the underlying truth of negative Internet content on young people is accentuated to some degree by stories like this.

Given the recent events here in the U.S. including the horror of Virginia Tech, I think we should all evaluate things that affect our young people. This is not to say that the Internet is causal in any of these events, but the simple physics of causality implicate a wide range of variables in the problems we face. Society is reflected on the Internet, but is the Internet reflected on society? These are larger questions that must sooner or later be addressed.