China and the Internet

Remember when all these American geeks thought the Internet would foster a new wave of democracy, becoming a virtual bastion of freedoms? Yeah. Well, we got blogs. But we got more than that -- we also got porn, lotsa porn, and scams. Guess what? So did China, reports the New York Times:

On any of China's leading search engines, enter sensitive political terms like "Tiananmen Square" or "Falun Gong," and the computer is likely to crash or simply offer a list of censored Web sites. But terms like "hot sex" or "illegal drugs" take users to dozens of links to Web sites allowing them to download sex videos, gain entry to online sports gambling dens or even make purchases of heroin. The scams are flourishing.

...

Even the official New China News Agency seems to have gotten into the act. While the top of its news pages carries dispatches like "China Aims to Achieve Balance of Payments in 2006," some at the bottom feature links to soft-porn photographs of Chinese movie stars like Gong Li and Zhou Xun.

Is anyone really surprised?