A senior Chinese Government official yesterday called for domestic companies and industry associations to collaborate in cracking down on irregularities and crime in the country's telecoms and Internet networks.

It will all be part of a wider campaign to "clear" cyberspace and telecoms networks, according to Xi Guohua, deputy chief of the Ministry of Information Industry (MII).

"Operators and value-added service providers need to run their businesses with a stronger sense of social responsibility," he said at a ceremony marking World Telecommunications Day (WTD).

WTD commemorates the founding of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) on 17 May 1865. In today's interconnected and increasingly networked world, societies are vulnerable to a wide variety of threats, including deliberate attacks on critical information infrastructures with debilitating effects on economies and societies. The ITU Council chose to highlight the serious challenges the world is facing in ensuring the safety and security of networked information and communication systems and has adopted the theme Promoting Global Cybersecurity for WTD 2006.

Despite the Internet and telecoms boom, Chinese users are becoming increasingly frustrated with pornography, gambling, spam, and fraud flooding the Internet and mobile phone networks.

Xi said MII's push to "build a healthy network environment" over the last two years have yielded "marked results".

The government has closed down many websites deemed to have illegal or unhealthy content.

Li Yue, vice-president of China Mobile, said his company has invested 1.5 billion yuan (US$187 million) in a billing and supervision system for Monternet, China Mobile's wireless portal.

Previously, loose supervision of the portal resulted in a spate of pornographic and unsolicited SMS texts (short messaging service) in 2004.

Some subscribers were even lured into "traps" and unwittingly subscribed to unwanted wireless services.

China Mobile launched a campaign to crack down on the irregularities, which pushed down the share prices of NASDAQ-listed Chinese Internet portals such as Sina Corp, Sohu.com and NetEase.com.

Portals such as these had been making a profit from sending out pornographic material to mobile phone users.

Li said complaints against Monternet dropped by 97 percent in 2005 due to the crackdown.

MII's Xi also urged telecoms operators to improve network and information security.

"The increasing spread of computer viruses and hackers are exposing the country to information insecurity, which poses a serious threat to the interests of the nation, the public and society," he said.

In 2004, a hacker gained control of more than 600,000 computers around China and attacked a music service website in Beijing over a period of three months.

The website suffered a loss of more than 7 million yuan (US$875,000).

In July 2005, Internet networks in Beijing experienced a large-scale breakdown, affecting the work and lives of people living and working in the capital as they were unable to access the Internet.

The cause of that breakdown has yet to be disclosed.

(China Daily May 18, 2006)