China plans to crack down on the online gambling industry,
including the banks and websites that support it, the Ministry of
Public Security said in a statement posted on its website.
The campaign will concentrate on investigating major and important
cases of online gambling, knock out domestic and foreign groups
that organize online gambling, and severely punish the criminal
elements, the statement said.
The crackdown, to be conducted between February and August, was
agreed to by eight government bodies including the Supreme Court,
Propaganda bureau, the Central Bank and the Ministry of Industry
and Information Technology.
Gambling was banned in mainland China after the Communist takeover
in 1949, the exceptions being two state lotteries - one run by the
sports ministry to fund the building of facilities.
Underground casinos, overseas conglomerates and illegal syndicates
have sprung up to fill the gap.
The statement said it would severely punish those who run
underground banks and third-party payment platforms that provide
banking services needed for gambling.
As in pornography crackdowns, website operators will also be
targeted.
The move is the latest in a series of curbs on the country's
relatively free-wheeling online world, one of the few arenas for
people from across China to interact in large groups, share
information and criticise the government.
A long-running anti-pornography drive has netted many sites with
politically sensitive or even simply user-generated content, in
what many see as an effort by the Chinese government to reassert
control over new media.
Widespread protests in Iran after a contested presidential election
alerted Beijing to the potential for protesters and dissidents to
use social media to spread their message.
China has banned Google's Youtube since March 2009, when a Tibetan
exile film documenting the injuries and death of a Tibetan
protestor was published on the video sharing site.
The government began blocking Twitter, Flickr and Facebook last summer.
