Pornography in China

There is no separate law for punish child pornography, simple possession is legal.[6]

The term Great Firewall of China was coined in 1997 by Geremie Barmé to describe the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the People's Republic of China to regulate the Internet domestically. First introduced in 1997, three years after the internet first arrived in China, it included regulations prohibiting the use of the internet to disseminate sexually suggestive material, among other things. The Great Firewall is a subsystem of the Golden Shield Project, also referred to as the National Public Security Work Informational Project.

In its effort to combat internet pornography and other internet activity which it deemed illegal, the government of China issued the widespread use of internet censors. Algorithms designed by tech companies including Alibaba and Tuputech, these censors were designed to detect, block, and remove all sexual content.[3] The development of artificial intelligence technologies has been essential in the success of the censorship of internet pornography in China.

Chinese internet censors are highly skilled at detecting pornographic images, audios, and videos. However, these censors are imperfect and susceptible to errors. An online lecture on human birth was shut down after censors flagged the livestream as pornographic material. “A livestreamed course on meiosis, the division of sex cells...” resulted in a similar problem for a biology teacher in Wenzhou, China. While trying to eliminate all sexual content, censors have inadvertently targeted educational content though the law allows it.[3]

Pornography related charges often carry serious punishments. Distributors of pornography can face up to life imprisonment and possession charges carry hefty fines and can cary prison sentences. Some critics claim that censorship disproportionately targets LGBT content, which leads to higher criminalization of authors and creators who attempt to make pornography more inclusive.[10] Others claim that the crackdown on pornography is used as a tool by the Communist Party to increase censorship and further limit freedom of expression.

Sex education is extremely limited in China. Consequently, pornography has become the "only source of information for millions of young people" looking to learn about sex.[3]

The first pornographic websites appeared in China before sites like YouPorn and Pornhub became popular in the West. A few major (though ill-fated) websites appeared in China during 2004, including "99 Erotica Forum" and "Erotica Juneday". The business model for these websites requires visitors to navigate through pay-per-click advertisements for sex toys, Viagra-esque pills, and online casinos before they can watch or download pornographic content. The websites typically offer a mix of domestic amateur pornography videos and pirated content from Japan, Europe and the US. They typically set up their servers overseas and frequently change their URLs to avoid being detected by the authorities. The quantity of advertisements on these websites, sometimes with no pornographic content available after the advertisements have been navigated, and the high risk of picking up malware in the process of attempting to access these websites has prompted some services in China to charge a membership fee in return for greater reliability and fewer or no advertisements. However, the use of domestic bank accounts makes such websites even more vulnerable to authorities. The continued creation and distribution of pornography, despite it illegality, has resulted in the imprisonment of thousands of people across China.

A crackdown of pornographic websites in 2004 lead to the arrests of over 200 people and the shutdown of over 700 pornographic websites including "99 Erotica", after having acquired more than 300,000 registered users within a year of its launch. One of those imprisoned, Wang Yanli, was believed to be the first woman jailed on a pornography related charge. She received a sentence of four years for operating an online strip club.[11]

In 2005 authorities sentenced its eleven workers, among them teachers and civil servants, to imprisonment ranging from three to twelve years for disseminating obscene material. In October 2006 authorities closed down "Erotica Juneday", which charged its highest-paying members 3,999 yuan (then around $490) a year, and sentenced founder Chen Hui to life imprisonment.[12] Among those who complained about the harshness of the sentence was the sociologist Li Yinhe. She called on authorities to either repeal the pornography laws in China or stop pretending the nation enjoys freedom of expression.

Between 2009 and 2010, crackdowns on pornography sites resulted in the arrests of thousands of people annually. In 2009, 5,394 people were arrested and 9,000 illegal porn-related sites were shut down.[13] In 2010, Chinese authorities shut down 60,000 pornographic websites and arrested almost 5,000 suspects.[14]

In 2011, dissident artist Ai Weiwei was investigated for allegations of distribution of pornography. As a sign of support, his fans posted nude pictures online.

The rescreening of the move Titanic in 2012, did not include the famous scene of Rose lying naked before Jack. The scene was removed after a regulatory agency ruled that the scene might prompt viewers to “reach out their hands for a touch.”

One of the largest censorship campaigns in recent years was created under President Xi Jinping’s government in 2014. The government shut down over 100 websites deemed to have been carrying sexually explicit content, closed thousands of social media accounts, and detained a number of authors, many writers of homoerotic fiction. In 2017 author Ms. Li, who uses her pen name Tianyi, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the homoerotic contents of her novel "Occupy". Police in Anhui Province, China, described the book as containing "obscene behavior between males." Most recently in 2019, 53 billion pieces of “harmful information” were removed from the search engine Baidu, half of which were pornographic.

With over 854 million internet users, China was the country with the highest number of internet users in the world as of December 2019. Consequently, despite its best efforts, the government of China has not been able to completely rid the internet of all pornographic content or prevent people from viewing it.