Some experts have called for further regulation of the text message market, along with increasing punishments for people found guilty of sending the "harmful" messages, the Beijing Morning Post reported.

During the weeklong Lunar New Year holidays, which started on February 1, mobile users sent nearly 6 billion short messages and more than 1 million multi-media messages, setting a record high.

The post reported that presently, only administrative punishments can be dealt out to "harmful" message senders according to Telecommunications Regulation and relevant Internet management methods.

As a result, the amount of criminal cases using short messages as evidence reached a new high, said the report.

Fraudulent messages being circulated include "Congratulations! You have won first prize in the lottery organized by our company. Please send 100 yuan (US$12) to the following bank account as a prize handling fee." Huangduanzi, or obscene stories, have also been distributed.

Everybody who owns a mobile phone throughout China is susceptible to such invasive messages, some of which even go much farther than the example.

"If a person intentionally sends sexual messages to a high number of mobile users, it could be tried under the crime of distributing pornographic articles," said the Post's report.

Some experts have opposed calls for tighter regulation.

"The huangduanzi is not as dangerous as some people make out. They are in fact mere jokes," Han Yusheng, a law professor at the Renmin University of China, said in an exclusive interview.

Han also said the spreading of such messages could not be successfully tried under current pornography laws because the lewd text messages were not a means for making profit, which is an important constitutive requirement of the crime.

But the professor stressed that sending short messages that viciously slander others could fall under the crime of insulting another person according to the Criminal Law.

(China Daily February 12, 2003)