China sticks to Internet filter plan - report

A Chinese Internet user browses for information on the popular search engine Google in Beijing January 25, 2006.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China will not revoke its controversial plan requiring all new personal computers to be sold with "Green Dam" Internet filtering software from July 1, an official newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Citing an unnamed official from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the China Daily said on its website (www.chinadaily.com.cn) that the government "will not back away" from the deadline when computers must be sold with the software. China says the software is needed to protect children from pornographic and violent images.

The brief report was the latest sign that the row over China's Internet controls will not go away quietly.

Critics in China have said the filtering software, sold by Jinhui Computer System Engineering Co., is technically flawed and could be used to spy on Internet users and to block other sites that Beijing considers politically offensive.

U.S. officials have also prodded Beijing to rethink the mandatory software plan.

"We hope that China will look at the broad array of concerns that the Green Dam mandate has prompted from its own citizens, from global PC companies, and from other governments, and revoke this measure," a U.S. official said in Washington on Monday.

Some Chinese Internet users are calling on fellow web surfers to stay offline on July 1 in a low-key protest against the software filter.

(Reporting by Chris Buckley in Beijing and Susan Cornwell in Washington; Editing by Ken Wills and Dean Yates)