CHINA:Online activity has relegated traditional forms of Chinese entertainment to near obscurity, writes Clifford Coonan
The cafe is up a dirty stairway in a decrepit building off a main street in eastern Beijing. There are some 60 screens in the gloomy room, most of them occupied at 5pm and at one sits a teenage boy, his hair fashionably dyed, with his cigarettes, his mobile phone and his car keys arranged carefully beside the keyboard.
Internet cafes are no longer centres for political dissent, since the government set up elaborate internet surveillance systems. The state blocks websites, including many news sites, and it has a rigorous system for keeping tabs on them.
In the West, an internet cafe is a place where backpackers go to check their e-mail. In China, it is where kids too poor to afford PCs go to relax and watch movies downloaded from the internet, play video games and chat to their sweethearts.
The future of cinema and television and other forms of electronic entertainment in China is being played out in this smoky room and in thousands like it all over the country.
On the left of one young PC-user's screen is the actress Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada, while on the right, the violent video game World of Warcraft generates mayhem. In the upper corner, a woman's face is on a webcam as she communicates with her multitasking boyfriend. The censor says Chinese audiences won't be seeing the Jackie Chan movie Rush Hour 3 on the big screen, but that doesn't mean the film won't be materialising on other screens across the nation.
The cafes are the second most popular way of going online and China has about 113,000 licensed cafes, but there are many more that operate illegally. Those using the cafe are often migrant workers from the countryside.
Online activity has relegated traditional forms of entertainment to near obscurity.
More than 80 per cent of youngsters said in a survey, by the China Youth Daily and Sina.com in January, that the internet was their primary source of entertainment, ahead of TV at 66 per cent.
Cinemas are a minority interest - China has about one screen per 430,000 people, compared to one screen per 8,000 people in the US. "It's very easy to find any movie," said one cafe visitor, who reckoned some 20 per cent of people come to the cafe to catch a film, while the rest come to chat online, game or surf. Internet users watch movies by downloading them free, or often they can watch on the cafe's hardware.
Last year, China's ministry of culture required internet cafes all over China to set up a unified online contents platform. When it is fully operational, the cafes will be completely under government control.
The cafes endure regular crackdowns, which drive them underground into ramshackle facilities in people's homes.
Under strict government licensing rules, cafes are required to log all customers, take note of their ID cards and monitor what websites they are looking at. But in practice these conditions are difficult to fulfil.
In March this year, the government banned the opening of new internet cafes, saying they were breeding grounds for juvenile delinquency. Most people said it was to stop them using the web's natural role as a platform for freedom of expression.
In January, President Hu Jintao ordered Chinese internet regulators to promote a "healthy online culture" to protect social stability.This week China's copyright agency, the ministry of public security and the ministry of the information industry, announced that they would work together to curb online piracy. The ministries will investigate cafes, punishing those who illegally download films and games and disseminate them.