China cracks down on Internet blogs

BEIJING, May 3 (UPI) -- China has launched a crackdown on "unhealthy" postings on the Internet, targeting sites that feature user-generated content and are popular among young people.

The campaign aims to clean up blogs, photos, and audio and video clips that "contradict social morality and Chinese traditional virtues," the South China Morning Post reported Wednesday.

Internet censorship has long been in place in China, but mostly has focused on political content and pornography.

Beijing site Tom Online said it would have to delete about 40 percent of user postings and 20 percent of user photographs. Spokesman Rico Ngai said the posts were "sexually suggestive," though not pornographic.

Marc van der Chijs, co-founder of Toodou.com, a Shanghai video-sharing site popular with teens, said there was a clear cultural generation gap in China.

"The younger people live in a different world than the politicians do. They like to show off more than the older generation," he said.