Mobile phones used to get past China's Internet censors

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    Date: 
    18 June 2010

    The mobile web in China has loopholes where content could go under the radar of government censors, analysts say.

    "It could be anything else the government normally frowns upon or does not consider healthy, which could be political content to pornographic content," said Mark Natkin, managing director of Beijing-based Marbridge Consulting, a market research and strategy consultant firm.

    Mobile phones in China have not escaped government control. Last December, nine Chinese ministries initiated a campaign, which ended in March, to crackdown on pornography transmitted via mobile networks.

    Mobile carriers also began monitoring text messages for pornographic and other "illegal" content, blocking phone services to subscribers found to have sent such messages, state media reported in January.

    However there are signs that the mobile Web has holes, which some say could grow bigger as more people buy smart phones and third-generation networks become stronger. Out of China's 346 million netizens, as the country's Web users are known, 233 million use mobiles to access the Internet, according to government statistics.