China’s anti-porn crackdown — its latest, I mean, in a long line of many — isn’t going as well as planned, because apparently porn is hard to block and everyone watches it, so the propaganda spinners have gone into overdrive to frame the story in a new light. If you want to see Chinese state media at its best / worst, these are the moments you cherish, when it completely jumps the shark.
Here’s the headline on both China.org.cn and Sina English for a recent story about the botched “Cleaning the Web 2014″ campaign:
Pornography crackdown opens up Chinese views on sex
Hurray! We may have failed to block porn, but at least we provided free sex ed.
“I’m single now and I often download adult videos,” says Xiao, who broke up with his girlfriend a year ago. “After all, sex is a basic human need and it’s wonderful.”
With the campaign in full swing, Xiao and other young Chinese are becoming more open to talking about sex.
I can’t begin to go through the thought-process of the poor Xinhua reporter who had to fake that quote. My favorite part is the tag, which points out Xiao broke up with his girlfriend before he began watching porn. We can’t have a source be too morally tainted, can we?
But what to make of this?
Dai Jiaobu recalled her experience: “The first time I watched, I was driven by curiosity. Then I felt it was a little disgusting. But now I often enjoy it with my boyfriend.” She concluded that it was a necessity in her sex life.
She recalled once finding her father watching adult videos at home: “It was embarrassing, but it didn’t affect my love for my father. I’m just curious that a 60-year-old man still needs it.”
Won’t someone please think of the… old people? That’s going to be China’s next anti-porn campaign, isn’t it? God save the honor of this country’s dear geriatrics.
By the way, here’s how Shanghai Daily, a more liberal paper that employs foreign copyeditors who aren’t complete hacks, headlined the exact same story:
Online porn still popular despite crackdown
As badly as the anti-filth crackdown is going, please, some reporting on the miserable failure of the “banning chuan’er outdoors” and the (renewed) indoor smoking ban! I mean, jeez, it’s a chinese version of democracy: “we all don’t like this law, so let’s all completely ignore it”
Unless I imagined it all… was… was it all a dream – have they not actually banned them?