In yet another tiresome effort to “control” the “internet”, China’s president Hu JinTao is calling for even more stringent controls on how the kind of media that Chinese citizens are exposed to.  The purpose?  To foster a”healthy online culture that … sticks to the direction of socialist advanced culture”  China has a legitimate reason to be concerned.  With over 100 million individuals using the Internet, which is more than the number of internet users in the US, and that number continuing to grow at greater than 20% per year, the need to monitor and control what they see has never been greater.

If, that is, you were seriously convinced that “cracking down” on the internet, or even TV, will have any material effect on what your citizens see.  Although the “Great Firewall of China” does a moderate job of censoring URLs and IP’s (even though China officially denies that it “censors” “anything”), there’s no question that information and rumours still flow freely through instant messaging systems, forums, and other kinds of web1.0 “social networking” systems.

Quite frankly, it will be interesting if there ever was a more concerted effort at enforcing its socialist “values” while restricting morally “suspicious” content throughout the Internet — if only for the focus it would put on China, and the deliciously strong backlash that would result.