BEIJING — It may just be a ploy to kick Apple out of the country, but China has targeted Apple’s App store as a porn provider.
China’s strict anti-porn government targeted Apple in its state-run newspaper People’s Daily along with a number of other obscure websites that it claimed is providing porn to its citizens.
Apple was listed next to other app stores that the newspaper singled out as suspected porn suppliers.
Although Apple has been squeaky clean about barring adult material in its store, the Chinese government in March reportedly named the App Store as a source of “obscene pornography.”
Regardless of its real motives (China is Apple’s second largest market), the Apple attack is in line with China’s continued crusade against porn that earlier this year shut down more than 225 websites and 30,000 blogs and Twitter-like microblogs.
According to the Wall Street Journal, China has even called Internet executives into industry-wide meetings asking for greater vigilance against suspected porn sites.
And analysts maintain that the Chinese government will sometimes use bans on porn to censor politically sensitive content.
