The Chinese Ministry of culture has a message for online gambling operators: We’re watching you very closely.
Ministry officials recently sent out warnings to 26 online gambling operators regarding their compliance to strict Chinese gaming regulations.
The warnings come in the wake of a string of recent scandals involving Baidu and Bitcoin, the Chinese search engine that’s generally thought of as the Chinese Google. It also seems fair to say that the Chinese government is cracking down on what it sees as illicit internet activity, including pornography and gambling.
According to a report on CalvinAyre.com, the Ministry of Culture is particularly troubled by the prospect of minors becoming addicted to gambling via online gambling sites. A perceived failure to protect youngsters is one of the main issues the Ministry seems to be focusing on in its latest anti-gambling blitz.
While the Chinese crackdown isn’t quite as severe as the recent crackdown by the government of the Philippine Islands, both are focused on problem gambling. In a statement to state news agency Xinhua, an unnamed Ministry employee said:
Businesses must learn their lessons, fulfil their responsibilities, improve their own self-censorship and operate their businesses in line with the law.
Officials at Baidu, which is also state run, were infuriated last month when they learned that gambling site operators had been using black hat SEO techniques, such as link cloaking, to direct traffic to their sites. That scandal seems seems to have inspired this latest crackdown.