1,900-yuan fine for downloading porn at home

Chinese Business View
September 19, 2008

Today’s Chinese Business View reported that a man in Nanyang, Henan Province was fined 1,900 yuan for downloading pornography from the Internet.

Ren Chaoqi is the 28-year-old owner of an auto parts store. On August 18, two police officers paid Ren a visit and took his computer away. Days later Ren received a 1,900 yuan ticket, the offence being that a 30 minute-long porn video was found on his computer.

Ren admitted that he downloaded the video from the Internet last year, but he thought 1,900 yuan was far too much to pay for such a petty crime. He is contesting the fine and said he would have accepted a 500 yuan fine. According Chinese law, it is illegal to “use the Internet to create, copy, retrieve, or disseminate feudal superstition, obscene or pornographic material, gambling, violence, murder, horror, or incitement to commit a crime.”

In other news, the State Council passed a set of modifications to the Labour and Contract Law, which took effect on January 1, 2008.

The law originally stipulated that employees who had worked more than ten years for an employer can sign open-ended contracts, a possibility hated by many employers, who believed the provision makes them lose leverage during negotiations with their senior employees.

Yesterday’s modifications clarified the term of those open-ended contracts, pointing out that they are not lifelong contracts, and an employee on an open-ended contract can still be fired under a certain conditions.

The modifications listed fourteen conditions under which an employer can terminate a labor contract, including “incompetence, serious violations of regulations, and dereliction of duty.”

Other news items on the front page:

• Trying to restore investors’ confidence, Chinese government scrapped the 0.1% stamp tax on stock transactions;
• Melamine has been detected in packaged milk produced by Yili, Mengniu, and Guangming, the largest three domestic dairy producers.