China widens "vulgar" online crackdown

By Emma Graham-Harrison

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has widened an Internet crackdown on "vulgar" content to target 14 new sites, including Microsoft's MSN, and chided fellow American giant Google for not doing enough to clean up.

China's ruling Communist Party is wary of threats to its grip on information and has conducted numerous censorship efforts targeting pornography, political criticism and web scams, but officials flagged tougher steps this time.

MSN was cited for the large amount of inappropriate images on its film channel and some "selected pictures" in its social messaging section on a list posted on the website of the government-supported China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center (ciirc.china.cn).

Microsoft could not immediately be reached for comment.

The campaign coincides with efforts to stifle dissent and protest as the economy slows and China enters a year of sensitive anniversaries -- particularly the 20th year since the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Websites and especially blogs have become magnets for many of the country's nearly 300 million registered Internet users who seek to read and publish news, views or just raunchy pictures that are off-limits to official media.

But the stability-obsessed government is fighting back with a sophisticated network of controls that can shut off entire websites or just block individual pages within them, and a system to encourage self-censorship by major Internet companies.

A shadowy troop of Internet police also patrols cyberspace, with avatars on many websites offering surfers a direct link to report pornographic, unpatriotic or otherwise offensive content.