China bars new Internet cafes for rest of 2007

BEIJING (AP) - China will license no new Internet cafes this year while regulators carry out an industry-wide inspection, the government says, amid official concern that online material is harming young people.

Investigators will look into whether Internet cafes are improperly renting out their licenses or failing to register the identities of their customers, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce said on its Web site.

"Industry and commerce bureaus at all levels must not license any new Internet cafes in 2007," said the notice, dated May 30.

The communist government encourages Web use for business and education but authorities are worried that it gives children access to violent games, sexually explicit material and gambling Web sites.

President Hu Jintao has ordered Chinese authorities to clean up "Internet culture," and the government launched a crackdown in April on online pornography, saying it was perverting young minds.

A report in April by the Beijing Reformatory for Juvenile Delinquents said 33.5 percent of its detainees were influenced by violent online games or erotic Web sites when they committed crimes such as robbery and rape.

In March, the government launched a crackdown on the transfer of Internet licenses after it said some holders, including schools, were improperly renting or selling them.

A Culture Ministry official was quoted at that time as saying China's approximately 120,000 Internet cafes was adequate to meet the needs of the market and no more were needed.

China has the world's second-largest population of Internet users, with 137 million people online, and is on track to surpass the United States as the largest online population in two years.

The government tries to block access to online material deemed obscene or subversive.

Internet cafes are hugely popular with customers who spend hours playing online games that link multiple competitors.

Last week, a Shanghai court ordered operators of an Internet cafe to pay 86,000 yuan (US$11,200; ?8,400) to the family of a 15-year-old boy who collapsed and died after playing online games for two straight days, the newspaper China Youth Daily reported. Internet cafes are supposed to limit the number of hours that minors are online.