In honor of Cyber Security Week in China — that’s this week, whereupon “China’s Internet police are stepping into the light,” according to WSJ — I thought we’d take a glimpse at the state of Chinese Internet smut through the lens of a recent happening, photographer Wang Dong’s now-infamous Forbidden City photo shoot featuring nude models.

Let’s compare how Chinese Internet censored the above picture — via SCMP — vs. how others did it, shall we?

Here’s The Independent:

Here is The Mirror, not exactly known for its modesty, using thick black lines to cover the woman’s sensitive parts:

Now let’s look at China Daily – technically state media, but it employs so many foreign editors that we can’t call it completely Chinese. Let’s consider this image a bridge into the hinterlands…

…of real Chinese Internet.

Here’s China.org.cn, using a considerably thin black line to cover the woman’s nipples. Cleavage, side boob, underboob, and pelvis are all fine…

…not like the Chinese Internet cops care, right?

WSJ:

Effective immediately, these agencies “cannot send images of [models] in swimwear or black lace,” Weibo Chief Executive Officer Wang Gaofei wrote on one of his verified blogs on Weibo. Mr. Wang also said these agencies won’t be allowed to use Weibo to publicize their online presence on other platforms.

The tone of Mr. Wang’s post took on a hint of exasperation. “If you really can’t” abide by such rules, Mr. Wang wrote, “then just act cutesy or sell bags.”

So with all its controls, smut patrols, campaigns against indecency, surely Chinese editors have received the message loud and clear, yes?

SZHK.com:

That’s basically nude!

Good luck, Net nannies. You have a tough job indeed, but at least it pays well.

A couple of years back, chinaSMACK reported on the qualifications for a “Chief Pornography Identification Officer.” Leave it to the clever folks of Global Times to whip up this handy infographic, published yesterday.

We especially like the section titled “What is considered pornographic?” A woman in a bikini outside the proper context — the bedroom and not the beach – could well be considered unacceptable.

Have a look at the rest. What do you think, could you do the job?

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

People’s Daily has had an eventful week. Last Monday it called the New York Times “circling vultures” for an article on Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370; on Friday it sought “immediate rectification” from a parody Twitter account, @relevantorgans; then, somehow, it got a guest editorial out of Bill Gates. But PD truly tops itself with this next thing, because these are words that someone actually wrote. Via Reuters:

“While ordinary people and governments have enjoyed the conveniences brought by the Internet, they have also in turn experienced the Internet’s negative effects and hidden security dangers…”

Wait, okay, let me just get this in before we really hit the truly gonzo part. “Hidden security dangers,” says the paper of a government that hacks everyone, and digitally spies on governments, foreign correspondents, and its own citizens. (Does that cover “everyone,” basically?)

“If you don’t have Internet order, how can you have Internet freedom?”

If you don’t have Internet order, how can you have Internet freedom.

There are many sites that are dedicated to Internet freedom, but strangely, none within China. GreatFire.org and Free Weibo can serve as wonderful watchdogs on Chinese Internet freedom, except they face one huge obstacle: the Chinese government. Reporters Without Borders called China one of 12 “enemies of the Internet”; the report was purposefully sensationalistic, but its premise is basically correct: when it comes to Internet freedom, China gives zero shits.

There will never be freedom — nor should there be, People’s Daily is saying. It’s order that should take primacy: here’s China launching yet another anti-porn campaign, like pulling weeds out of a prairie; here they are bullying Sina into apologizing twice because it needs corporations to shoulder the dirty burden of censorship; and look, here they are pulling foreign TV shows because while they like money, they’d much rather have control.

If you think People’s Daily really cares about porn though — the lurid objectification of bodies to stimulate sexual arousal — check out what’s on its “related links”:

People’s Daily, everyone: crusader of social conservatism and lawful order.

Continuing with Reuters:

“Anyone enjoying and exercising their Internet rights and freedoms must not harm the public interest and cannot violate laws and regulations and public ethics.”

Between a) public interest, b) laws and regulations, and c) public ethics, which do you think People’s Daily considers most important? Public interest, like porn? Public ethics, like fighting for the powerless? (Hmm.) Or… that other one?

Yeah. That’s what I thought.

China party mouthpiece says no Internet freedom without order, as U.S. TV shows pulled (Reuters)

Discourage, suppress, and censor it as you may — and lord knows authorities try, try, and try again — you’ll never rid the world of porn, porn, porn. Some Chinese health department officials discovered this recently firsthand.

The Nanfang reports:

…a university student surnamed Li was randomly clicking through the website in the hope of finding a job in the bureau. Little did he know when he clicked on a link to Huidong No. 2 People’s Hospital, one of the bureau’s subsidiary units, he hit the motherload: pictures of scantily-dressed women in racy positions, and Chinese ads for naked chatting and prostitution. This obscene content was planted in notable places on the page, according to descriptions from Nanfang Daily.

The bureau claimed it was “hacked” and that local police have been called in. Oh God, those chums. This case will never be solved.

Previously in Chinese misadventures with porn:

• Senior Chinese Pornography Censor Watches A Lot Of Porn, Hates It
• Porn Accidentally Broadcast On Public LED Screen In China, Again
• An Interview With Guda, Star And Producer Of The Xinhua-Endorsed Fetish Film “Lethal Injection”
  …

Porn found on official website of Huidong Health Department (The Nanfang)

We’re still awaiting word from Astrill support, but in case you’re wondering, yes, the popular VPN service is down — both the website and service itself. We don’t know if it has anything to do with China, but probably not — “technical problem,” says Astrill.com. Look at that emoticon – that is the sorriest goddamn sad-face I’ve ever seen.

Equally disconcerting, it appears PornHub — which has survived Chinese Internet kill-switches and myriad anti-pornography sweeps — has finally fallen under the axe here. We’re not sure when this happened, and without a VPN we can’t go on GreatFire.org to check, but it’s done. Goddamn you, Chinese Internet.

On the bright side, Pornwall.com remains up — ahem — by which I mean accessible without a VPN. Go crazy, folks.

UPDATE, 2/28, 2:04 am: Astrill mass email:

First of all we would like to apologize to all our customers for the unexpected downtime. The rumors of Astrill being blocked or taken down by the authorities are false and have no element of truth in them. You can read below what exactly happened:

Yesterday at around 20:00 CET, our hosting company had a network outage due to an alleged DDoS attack. They have made some changes to their network equipment to remedy the attack and prevent it in the future. However, whatever changes they performed, this has caused our VLAN network used to communicate between our servers to be broken. We have contacted the hosting company to look into the issue.

We are working now to fix our service and trying to get in touch with our hosting company for an explanation and backups of all our files. Rest assure, our technicians are working around the clock to restore all services as soon as possible.

Now we can just ask you for your patience and understanding. Please be assured we will restore all the services and customers will be compensated for this downtime.

For updates, please follow our Twitter page: https://twitter.com/astrill

We have restored access to OpenWeb service. In the next few hours we will restore OpenVPN/StealthVPN.

— Astrill VPN (@astrill) February 27, 2014

(H/T Eric Jou)

A book called Those Who Don’t Read It Upside-down Are Pigs, among others, has been seized for “spreading pornography,” according to Xinhua, as edited by Global Times. And two publishers, China Pictorial Publishing House and Shaanxi Normal University Publishing House, have been suspended for three months.

No one thinks porn — or explicit content — in children’s books is a good idea. If a book is marketed for children, you probably shouldn’t include pornographic material. The problem here is we have no idea where the line is, who’s setting it, and what we’re really talking about. Xinhua certainly doesn’t clarify:

Boasting explicit phrases and branding ancient scholars as “rogues,” the book “Those Who Don’t Read It Upside-down Are Pigs” published by China Pictorial Publishing House is full of vulgar content with shoddy editing quality.

“Explicit phrases” is “pornography”? And where do I begin with “branding ancient scholars as ‘rogues’”? Bullshit, maybe. History is so sacrosanct that we can’t risk letting funnymen pollute our children’s minds with non-state-sponsored pedagogy, is that right?

That’s the cynic in me speaking, of course, but help me out here, State General Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television: make me a little less skeptical of your motives.

Speaking of shoddy editing, check out People’s Daily’s editing of Xinhua’s story, which begins:

With a cover teeming with cartoon pigs, a hit Chinese book reads, “Taxi driver said, ‘There are many beauties in your school, but they are expensive.’ …The student answered, ‘You get half off with a teacher’s certificate.’”

Boasting explicit phrases and branding ancient scholars as “rogues,” the book “Those Who Don’t Read It Upside-down Are Pigs” might not be a children’s classic, but online commenters claimed they bought the title for their kids, and their kids liked the book of humorous stories.

We’re not necessarily supporting Those Who Don’t Read It Upside-down Are Pigs, or recommending it, but here it is on Dangdang, where it costs 16.40 yuan and has a product rating of five stars with a recommendation rate of 97.7%. Several of the 263 product reviews I saw were variations of “not bad” and “funny.” Buy it while you can.

(H/T J., Helen Gao)

In the above picture, a doctor is about to administer a lethal injection to the woman being strapped to the bed. It’s a stark and somber scene, only more shocking because a cameraman was allowed to document, close-up, the stages of this real-life execution.

At least, that’s what Xinhua, the official press agency of the People’s Republic of China, thought when it published a slideshow titled, “Actual Record of Female Inmate’s Execution – Exposing the World’s Darkest Side.” (The pictures have since been removed, but you can find them on the website Out of My Face.) It turns out the images were actually screengrabs from a 2011 porno titled Lethal Injection, produced by DSP Booking (dspbooking.com) and starring its founder, Guda, who plays the doctor.

“Looks like she is not happy with being killed and is fighting with the guard and myself,” Guda, asked what was happening in the scene, told us via email. “She looks like she was knocked out, strapped down and checked for her vital signs, then executed by lethal injection. Then I bang her.”

Oh. Do continue…

How do you feel about Xinhua?

I love them and would like to ask them for a tour of their beautiful country. I will give them demonstrations of our execution techniques and possible alliterative uses for the cute’r cadavers.

How did you find out Xinhua screengrabbed your movie, and what was your reaction?

One of our customers forwarded the link to my partner. I tweeted and sent out a few emails, then I took off all my clothes and did some jumping and yelling.

How does it feel to be excerpted, albeit inadvertently, by China’s most official, topmost news agency?

I’ve had hundreds of body cavity searches so it felt pretty good.

Will you use this exposure in future pitches, clips, or promotional material? “Guda, as seen on Xinhua”?

I am a shameless self-promoter. This all works out very well, fitting nicely into my plans for world domination. I would like a copy of the actual paper, although that probably could be faked pretty easy.

How did the inspiration / idea for Lethal Injection come about?

All our movies are custom-made (customvideos4u.com). So someone wrote the script and paid us to make it.

What misconceptions exist about fetish porn? Do you think Xinhua might have shed light on any of these misconceptions?

The biggest misconception is that these types of movies inspire people to do these types of acts for real. What website/movie inspirited the Medieval torture chambers? Xinhua shed light on the best custom movie-maker in the industry. There may have been some misconceptions that I was not the best. But I think we have cleared that up pretty good here.

May have to use your imagination slightly on this one — if you could cast Xinhua in a fetish porn, what role would it play?

Xinhua is most defiantly a villain. Lying is bad nkay…  but I’d make it funny so Xinhua would have a huge cock.

Before this incident, what did you know about Xinhua? Knowing what you know now… what would you guess they are like?

I keep up on world events pretty well. Had I been asked directly if I knew who they were, I’d have had to make an educated guess as to who they were. My guess is they are the Chinese version of Fox News.

Guda runs DSP Booking (dspbooking.com), and can be followed on Twitter @maxcoxxx.

It’s been a while since our friends at Xinhua have done something truly absurd, but today, China’s official state-run news agency has really outdone itself. The culprit this time is not Xinhua’s English-language slideshow, but a Chinese edition, which recently published 40 pictures that appear to be screenshots from a fetish porno.

We tip our hat to the website Out of My Face, which discovered the above as part of Xinhua’s slideshow titled, “Actual Record of Female Inmate’s Execution – Exposing the World’s Darkest Side.”

Actual record of female inmate’s execution, eh? Really, Chinese state-run news agency?

That, um, appears to be rape porn.

I did a quick image search and found the photos on Themis Collection (SFW), whose website owner says he got the photos from PKF Studios (most definitely NSFW; you can Google it if you’d like).

Out of My Face writes that it traced the pictures to a site called xxxrape.net, though it’s unverified whether the photos were first published there or not. The point is: these pictures do not show an “actual” execution, and they fall way short of “exposing the world’s darkest side.”

UPDATE: Read our interview with Guda, star of the above film.

It’s here we’d like to remind you that this is not the first time Xinhua has run porn in its slideshows. Last October, we discovered that it was using screengrabs from the porn site Ultimate Surrender in a piece called “Crazy women fighters.”

Xinhua wasn’t the only Chinese news site that posted this most recent set of photos though. There was also Global Times, which ran a slideshow with the same title three days before Xinhua.

Nice job, everyone.

Xinhua exposes world’s (and young woman’s) underbelly (Out of My Face)

Today, barbarians of the unruly and unruled Internet are less dangerous. Today, your sleep will be sounder, your dreams more colorful, your future freer. For today, Britain, you are one step closer to achieving China’s harmony-promoting, children-protecting Net filtration system, which we lovingly refer to as the Great Firewall. And how great it is: no porn, because it can be eradicated like rats; no discussion of historical events, so as not to offend the sensibilities of certain mothers who would prefer to forget those things ever happened; no YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, New York Times, or Bloomberg, because screw ‘em; and no dissent (and why would there be dissent?). Hadrian’s Firewall, we’ll call it. You’ll love it, as we do.

David Cameron, your prime minister, is a wonderful man of principle with only the best intentions. He understands nothing is more important than children, who necessarily need paternal guidance, who need love and doting, yes, but also discipline and authority. For the world is a dark place, a scary forest, populated by evil. Against these unseen shadows, mortal parents are not enough, for they are fallible. There is a more perfect parent, one with the power to block the forces which would corrupt your village from the heart. Trust him, for no one loves you as unwaveringly and unimpeachably.

Surely you have heard that the Chinese company Huawei controls your Net filtration system. Pay no mind. Who cares about those critics who say the UK is, today, in one way more similar to Russia, North Korea, and other Internet-censoring countries than yesterday. You are one step closer to safety, to symmetry with the traditional values on which your island nation is built, to harmony, the kind that we enjoy every morning, and every night. Remember: autocrats love their children, too.

Look and listen to David Cameron, your most perfect father:

I want to talk about the internet, the impact it’s having on the innocence of our children…

The innocence of our children.

…how online pornography is corroding childhood and how, in the darkest corners of the internet, there are things going on that are a direct danger to our children and that must be stamped out.

Must be stamped out.

I’m not making this speech because I want to moralise or scaremonger but because I feel profoundly, as a politician and as a dad, that the time for action has come.

The time for action has come.

This is, quite simply, about how we protect our children and their innocence.

Their innocence. The children.

Now, of course, a free and open internet is vital. But in no other market and with no other industry do we have such an extraordinarily light touch when it comes to protecting our children.

Protecting our children. Their precious innocence.

Children can’t go into the shops or the cinema and buy things meant for adults or have adult experiences; we rightly regulate to protect them.

Regulate. Protect them.

But when it comes to the internet, in the balance between freedom and responsibility we’ve neglected our responsibility to children.

Everyone, together now, with a single voice: We are all children. We are all innocent. We have been neglected.

And all the actions we’re taking today come back to that basic idea: protecting the most vulnerable in our society, protecting innocence, protecting childhood itself.

We deserve that.

That is what is at stake…

A more innocent world.

…and I will do whatever it takes to keep our children safe.

(H/T Torval Lokison) (Image via)

Hundreds of onlookers, like flies to light, were entranced by a public showing of pornography on a big-screen near a railway station in Jilin, Jilin province last Wednesday, reports SCMP. This is not the first time something like this has happened.

In Henan last June, passersby of a Dico’s were treated 20 minutes of free porn. In Guangdong in February, this porn flick.

The film in Jilin was broadcast on an LED screen on the roof of the Kaixuan building for about 10 minutes. It was an adaptation of the Ming Dynasty erotic novel The Plum in the Golden Vase, which probably would be canonized among China’s “great novels” if there weren’t already four classics that don’t contain so much eroticism.

How did it happen?

In mid-June, the screen malfunctioned, and Yuan Mou, a technician from Fujian Kewei Optical Company, was hired to carry out maintenance work, Xinhua reported on Sunday.

Jilin police took Yuan into custody for questioning on Friday. Yuan said he had lived in the Kaixuan building while carrying out maintenance work on the LED screen. On Wednesday evening, mistakenly believing the screen’s computer to be disconnected, he began watching Xin Jin Ping Mei. He then received a phone call from Southern Advertising Company telling him that the film was being broadcast live to several hundred onlookers. Yuan promptly disconnected the computer and discarded the Xin Jin Ping Meidisc. Jilin authorities are still investigating the matter.

Folk hero, this Yuan fella.

Erotic film broadcast to hundreds outside railway station (SCMP, h/t Nick Papa, Alicia)

UPDATE, 7/8, 12:13 pm: Annnnnd here’s video:

We talk about censors as if they weren’t real, but SCMP serves us this useful reminder that the people deleting your videos, expurgating articles, handcuffing artists, destroying the TV and entertainment industry, and — the of course of “of courses” — blocking porn, are made of flesh and blood, with intellectual capacities, however stunted, and human desires.

Well, some used to have human desires, before they were forced to watch porn all day. Desensitized, sex is but gymnastics with bad theatrics, something to pass the time, like a run on the treadmill.

At first, the experience was “awkward, my face and ears turned red and my heart skipped a beat”, Liu Xiaozhen, a 70-year-old member of the investigative team, said as he recalled his first day on the job.

His job censoring porn, is what we’re talking about.

Liu is a member of the Hunan provincial “eliminate pornography and illegal publications” office. Such departments exist throughout the mainland, and because of their indecorous duties, officials usually keep quiet about their work.

The poor dude is 70 years old. Christ. How cruel can his superiors be to force him to watch young, sweaty bodies, “two beings with evolved eyes,” as Robert Haas puts it in the poem “Privilege of Being,” “rapacious, // startled, connected at the belly in an unbelievably sweet // lubricious glue”?

Speaking of glue, someone should put Old Liu out to pasture — for his sake, and that of the shuddering angels.

‘You have to watch it even if you don’t want to,’ says senior pornography censor in China (SCMP, h/t Eldes Tran; the image is via SCMP, with one particular tweak by yours truly)

Bo Jiang, the suspected Chinese spy who was pulled off a plane on March 16 just as it was preparing to fly him out of the country, downloaded more than just classified NASA documents and sensitive information, as revealed by Bloomberg.

Actually, let’s back up a bit. Did he actually possess classified NASA documents and state secrets?

In late March, US Magistrate Judge Lawrence Leonard released Jiang from custody “after a federal prosecutor acknowledged there is no evidence so far that he possessed any sensitive, secret or classified material.” So the answer, at least legally, is no. Jiang’s lawyer, Fernando Groene, called the proceedings a “witch hunt” to which Jiang was made a “scapegoat.”

So what do prosecutors have on him? Bloomberg:

Bo Jiang, who was indicted March 20 for allegedly making false statements to the U.S., was charged yesterday in a separate criminal information in federal court in Newport News, Virginia. Jiang unlawfully downloaded copyrighted movies and sexually explicit films onto his NASA laptop, according to the court filing. A plea hearing is set for tomorrow.

Let’s reiterate here that the “making false statements to the US” reportedly did not stick. His trial was scheduled for May 29, but “along with the misdemeanor, the government said it had resolved the false statements case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg said in a filing today,” according to Bloomberg.

It’s not clear how it was resolved. But prosecutors are obviously desperate if they’re now charging Bo Jiang with possessing “unlawfully downloaded copyrighted movies and sexually explicit films.” It’s like going after Al Capone with tax evasion, except nothing at all like it: violating agency computer usage policy is only a misdemeanor.

A plea hearing is set for tomorrow. The worst that will now happen to the 31-year-old Jiang, it appears, is a loss of face. Possession of porn. We hope his mother never finds out.

Chinese NASA Spy Suspect to Plead to Computer Rule Charge (Bloomberg)

You know this already, we’re sure, because you surf the Internet, but if not, here’s the quick and dirty:

Melissa Murphy is a makeup artist who does work with porn stars and nude models, making them look like plastic sex objects instead of human beings a regular person might shake hands with. (Read her interview with Slate, or this story on Gawker.) Her collection has recently begun doing the Internet rounds, though most websites have been happy to merely sample from the honey jar, choosing a couple dozen or so pictures for illustrative purposes (Allie Haze, above, has been a popular one).

NetEase, meanwhile, has stuck its head shoulder-deep into said jar and is licking its bottom as we speak. Here, in its March 13 post, are 93 pictures of “American AV actresses before and after makeup.” That’s all of them. For comparison’s sake, Hypervocal published 15 photos. Bro Bible stopped at 20. Daily Mail? 29. Huffington Post, that most brazen of aggregators and SEO necromancers, did a mere 59.

chinaSMACK has all those NetEase pictures laid out for you, clickable for enlarging. No, dude, not that kind of enlarging. Go over there for a closer look. We have thumbnails.

“Fuck, I only recognize two of them,” writes NetEase commenter “luoben126,” as translated by chinaSMACK.

How many can you recognize?

(For answers, flip over to Izismile, which has identified all of the 93.)

‘American’ Porn Stars Without Makeup, Chinese Netizen Reactions (chinaSMACK)

I don’t want to steal pageviews from Sina English, which has just published probably its funniest set of captions ever, so go over there and check out “Zoo plays AV to help pandas mate.”

They run a total of three pictures, the captions to each are as follows:

• “The first time was failed.”
• “Pandas are watching AV attentively.”
• “Successfully mating”

That last caption should be punctuated with an exclamation mark and a flurry of confetti emoticons. The top photo is of the successfully mating. It is, like panda porn, not safe for work. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

(H/T Alicia)