Cleaner cyberspace

In a healthy society, porn and lewd materials should have no place in public life. Especially, they should be totally out of bounds for minors. However, for a long time such content has been just a few clicks away on many Chinese websites. How to effectively create a cleaner cyberspace remains a difficult task for the authorities.

But the difficulty is no reason to avoid the task or underestimate its importance. The latest round of anti-porn drive has not therefore come a day too soon. Its efforts to purify the Internet's environment for the healthy development of children are laudable, to say the least. The Ministry of Public Security and six other government agencies are working together to issue warnings to or shut websites according to law.

It is commendable that major companies such as Google and Baidu are targeted for the first time. The big search engines are among the most used by the general public including minors. So their failure to leave out vulgar content and eradicate links to pornographic sites is particularly inexcusable. It exposes children and teenagers to dangers and temptations that they are too young to cope with.