Chinese Censors Target Internet Spoofs

Chinese communist apparatchiks, hardly known for their sense of humour, are now planning a crackdown on online spoofs of the regime's icons and approved films and celebrities.

According to the Beijing News newspaper, the State Administration for Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) is drafting rules to block internet broadcasts of short films that satirise officially approved cultural products.

In the past, online pranksters have lampooned Lei Feng, a soldier who was a model of Maoist loyalist before dying in a lorry accident. Another target was Chen Kaige, the Oscar-nominated director of 1993's Farewell My Concubine, whose latest film, the high-profile costume drama The Promise, was parodied earlier this year in a 20-minute online film called Murder Over a Steamed Bun. The short shot its maker, Hu Ge, to instant fame, and attracted the threat of a lawsuit from Chen.

But all these fun and games could come to an end. According to the Beijing News, the SARFT is to "launch a severe attack on rule violations across the entire sector".

"SARFT has established a quite advanced internet audiovisual monitoring centre and plans to set up monitoring centers in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong," Lui Jianhui, a censorship official at SARFT told the daily. "Connected with each province, a timely, effective monitoring system will be formed."

The move is part of a wider campaign by Chinese authorities to control internet content. According to the Beijing News, in 2004, the Chinese authorities issued a regulation requiring the censor's approval for the distribution of all audiovisual content on the net, mobiles, television and other media. In addition, Google recently launched a censored version of its site in China. Many Chinese-language blogs and websites deemed politically dangerous have been shut down in recent months.