By staff reporter Ming Shuliang

(Caijing.com.cn) Citing the need to protect Chinese youth from pornography and other harmful sites, China will require all new PCs, both domestically produced and imported ones, to come with a website-filtering program prior to being sold.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology posted the circular, dated May 19, on its website June 9. The policy will come into effect July 1.

The filter software package, known as Green Dam Youth Escort, could filter porn and violent words or images on the Internet, as well as allow parents to control how long their children browse the Internet. 

The ministry said it spent 41.8 million yuan on buying the exclusive use and service of the software for one year from Jinhui Computer System Engineering Co. and Dazheng Language Processing Science Co.

However, all PC buyers will receive the software for free, installed on either the computers’ hard drives or included in a compact disc with each purchase.

Lan Ye, president of Founder Technology Group Corp, said that all computers sold under China’s rural purchase subsidy scheme have been required to install the software.

Zhang Saying, a spokesman for Dell China, said that the company has received the Chinese government's notice and is currently evaluating how to carry out the policy.

In late April, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Finance and the State Council Information Office ordered primary and secondary schools to install the software by the end of May.

According to the official Green Dam web-site at www.lssw365.net, their software has already been installed to 52.7 million computers, and downloaded 251,985 times.

1 yuan = 14 U.S. cents

Full article in Chinese: http://www.caijing.com.cn/2009-06-09/110179990.html