The Chinese government continued its effort to limit the extent of pornography in the Internet by inviting 19 Web company — including the popular Google and Baidu search engines — to "purify the Internet's cultural environment and protect the healthy development of minors".

Chinese officials issued a similar statement exactly a month ago, on Dec. 5, but attracted little attention. Beijing said that the Ministry of Public Security and six other government agencies would work together to achieve the goal.

Today's statement went further by saying that 19 Web companies have failed to do enough to stop or limit the spread of pornography; later today, the full list of companies was published, each company with a note detailing the reason for the goverment's accusations. The Google entry simply said: "Searching for images results in an enormous number of vulgar, pornographic sites. Google, receiving notice, did not undertake any effective measures."

Google's image search feature allows users to select whether to filter the results through its "SafeSearch" feature, which is enabled by default: by clicking on the "Advanced Features" link, users can easily (and irregardless of their age) change the default settings to "Moderate Filtering" or even to "No filtering" at all, where even non sex-related queries can sometimes yield explicit images in their first results.

Cai Mingzhao, deputy chief of the cabinet's Information Office, said some websites had taken advantage of government policies and loopholes to publish "low-class, crude and even vulgar contents, which severely corrupted the public mentality". "For those websites that repeatedly ignore warnings, we will publicise a few, punish a few and even close down a few," he said in today's statement.

A Google spokeswoman for China, Jin

Cui, said the company had no immediate reaction to the criticism and was unaware of any new regulations or restrictions on the Internet in China.

But even Baidu, the most popular search engine in China (followed by Google), was accused of featuring a massive amount of links to pornographic sites as well as providing blogging services that were used by some people to post vulgar images.

"The government will continue to expose, punish or even shut down those infamous websites that refuse to correct their wrongdoing," it is further stated in the press release. "Immediate action is needed to purify the internet environment."

The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, which has separate authority in China to regulate video on the Internet, conducted its own campaign in March against businesses that made pornographic videos available. That campaign included shutting down the Internet operations of one of the most popular video-sharing services, Tudou, for a full day as a warning.

China has launched crackdowns on pornography and political activists before, but this latest campaign would result in tougher measures being adopted, government officials told the press. The Chinese government has been known to block access to websites — particularly for political reasons — in the past, with the Reporters Without Borders association describing it as an "enemy of the Internet" because of its strict censorship policies.

This doesn't make the Chinese government effort to protect minor's access from pornographic material any less praiseworthy, as long as the process won't be taken as an excuse to take Internet censorship to the next level in the country.

At the time of this writing, China has the world's largest online population with an estimated 253 million active surfers, according to official figures, and is growing rapidly as growing income levels allow more and more families to own a computer with Internet access.