Gedong Youth Ignore Internet Cafe Ban
When I first got to China, I had no phone or computer. What I did have was a mother who made me promise to get in touch with her when I arrived. I set out to find an internet cafe. And maybe the 4th person for whom I did my little typing-on-a-keyboard charade walked me across the street to a Chinese internet cafe. While I just needed to write a quick email, it seemed like everyone else there had been there for days doing what Chinese teenagers do best: playing computer games. Not like the way me and my sister used to sit quietly and play the Oregon Trail. I’m talking about 50 different pairs of high-quality computer speakers turned all the way up blasting gunfire, explosion sounds and computerized though human-sounding grunts and men yelling “Fire!.” While these places sound like war zones, for Chinese teenagers, many of whom are without a computer at home, the internet cafe is the place to be. In Friday’s Washington Post, Edward Cody writes about the internet cafes in Gedong, in China’s Shanxi province, which have been closed down by the county’s Communist Party Secretary. Zhang Guobiao banned the internet cafes nine months ago because he felt they were a bad influence on the county’s youth. Edward Cody writes:
China’s leaders have professed a desire to see people use the Web widely to seek knowledge and economic advantage. But they also have expressed determination to keep it under party control. The goal, they have said, is to keep Chinese away from sites deemed unfit because of pornographic or politically sensitive content — or, in the case of Fangshan County, because they waste teenagers’ time with frivolous games.
And surprisingly, nine months later, an overwhelming majority of the county’s parents said they support the ban, according to the Post. In Shanghai, local officials have attempted to block certain sites, like porno sites and internet gaming sites in order to control how the city’s youth spend their time online. A Shanghai official compared the internet to the Yellow River saying, “You can’t just block the river’s flow. You have to let the water out. The same is true of the Internet.” And what happened in Gedong after the ban is that many illegal underground internet cafes opened which are less regulated and presumably less safe. While Zhang is under the impression these cafes are still closed, one 15-year-old told the Post, “In less than a month after the ban, the Internet cafes all reopened.” Another boy hanging outside of an underground cafe said, “The party secretary of this town has no idea of what the Internet is.” As I’ve learned from numerous Chinese guys who tried to impress me with some softer than soft computer-downloaded porn, the more you try to censor something, the more people will try to get their hands on it.
•Washington Post: Despite a Ban, Chinese Youth Navigate to Internet Cafes