The Chinese government has been encouraging Internet companies and website managers to clean up web content in a nationwide drive. The campaign was launched in Beijing on 25 June, under the typically long-winded slogan “Welcome to the Olympics, improve manners and foster new attitudes,” which leaves very little to be lost in translation. Apparently, the campaign has been well received – at least according to official sources, that is.

Adult themes and all those annoying emails that clog up one’s inbox, infected emails and deceptive materials, are all to be purged in the drive to create a cleaner and more pleasant Internet environment in the turn up to the Beijing Olympics. This could be an aspect of Chinese government controls we should be so lucky as to see elsewhere on the web! Earlier this year, the authorities launched a similar campaign for public education aimed at encouraging the Chinese to drop the habit of spitting in the streets. It seems then, that the virtual and real environments in China are set to experience quite a spring clean.

Moral responsibility is what the Chinese government wants to see on the Internet and what Internet companies cannot do for themselves, the authorities will probably do for them! Meanwhile, perhaps the campaign slogan could be shortened to “clean minds, clean streets”. But then, who knows what that would translate as.