China Reportedly Takes Aim at Smartphone Porn Apps

LOS ANGELES—Smartphones made in China are so ubiquitous that in 2012 CNET actually published an article with the headline, "Are Any Smartphones Not Made in China?" So it is a tad ironic that the communist nation has announced new plans to crack down on smartphone apps that feature "pornography and obscene content," reports Business Insider. The government's concern over smartphone content reflects the deep penetration the devices have made among China's citizens. As BI notes, "China has the world's biggest online population, with 632 million Internet users, and the majority—83 percent as of the end of June—use smartphones to access the web." The campaign to target mobile apps was announced Tuesday by officials at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), who said the campaign "will encourage companies to remove the offensive material themselves," but will also "enhance abilities to discover pornographic and obscene apps" and "improve the process of punishment." As with each launch of a new anti-porn campaign by the Chinese government, however, critics claim that rather than truly targeting porn, the "crack down aims to quash anti-government discourse." Indeed, while accessing porn is likely a popular use for smartphones by Chinese citizens of all types—and should probably have been considered by some former officials instead of the Buddha hiding place—the larger campaign by the government to crackdown on internet and mobile content has always targeted "what it calls 'rumors' and 'pornography' online due to their harmful effect on the country," lending credence to the claim that porn is a lower priority for the government than other types of speech it would like to see banished from public discourse.