WebProNews

The Chinese New Year will begin on January 26th, and for some of the most prominent Internet companies in China, it's not shaping up to be a good one.  Government officials are going after Google, Baidu, and Sina for distributing "vulgar" content.

The China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Centre put out a list today identifying sites that in some way offend its sensibilities.  Far from being straightforward providers of pornography, most of the organizations just offer search functions or photo-sharing capabilities.

 

As reported by Tania Branigan, a Chinese official explained, "Some websites have exploited loopholes in laws and regulations.  They have used all kinds of ways to distribute content that is low-class, crude and even vulgar, gravely damaging mores on the internet."

Neither the official nor the CIIIRC went on to make any threats, but it'll be hard for the affected companies to interpret this development as anything but bad.  If they censor content, they're likely to lose users.  If they don't censor anything, they risk being hit by outages and blocks.

At least one American corporation with a Chinese arm may be sitting pretty, though, as the CIIIRC didn't identify Yahoo as a troublemaker.