Word: cybercafé
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Dates: during 2002-2002
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...Chen's world. Last week, authorities kicked off a nationwide crackdown against China's estimated 150,000 unlicensed Internet caf?s, comparing them to opium dens where young men slowly destroyed themselves a century ago. In mid-June, 25 people were killed when a pair of teens torched a Beijing cybercaf? that had refused them entry. It was the capital's deadliest fire in decades. The central government used the blaze as an excuse to order the closure of thousands of illegal Internet outlets over the next two months, threatening the owners with prosecution...
...government has for several years staged periodic cybercaf? raids, usually on the grounds that online pornography and violent, addictive computer games are a moral hazard to the nation's youth. But psychological and safety considerations are only a small part of the campaign to shut down what is, for many Chinese, the main artery to the Internet. Control-crazy officials are struggling to monitor an information-packed online world that by its very name, the Web, is a tangle of unmanageable links to "cultural pollution." Since 2000, the number of Internet users in China has quadrupled to 38.5 million...
...only a tiny minority of China's cybercaf?s is playing by the rules. Since the hourly charge is less than 50 cents at the priciest Shanghai outlets, city dwellers vow to keep surfing. "Coming to an Internet bar is cheaper than karaoke or a pub or a disco," says Zhang Guoming, a 34-year-old cybercaf? owner in Shanghai. "There's less harm in it than going elsewhere. Why are they trying to close us down...
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