China adds blocking software to PCs

China wants all new personal computers sold in the country from 1 July to include software that will automatically block websites banned by the government.

According to a leaked document from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the plan is aimed at preventing "harmful" information from influencing young people, reported the Wall Street Journal.

China has the world's largest internet population and regularly blocks websites that fall foul of official tastes or whose content is deemed unacceptable.

Last week during the build up to the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, it banned access to Twitter and a raft of other social-networking websites.

The new plan, part of a government program called "Green Dam-Youth Escort", represents a radical shift in government control.

"The apparent objective of the software is to control access to pornographic sites, but we don’t know what else is in the code," said Charles Mok, chairman of the Hong Kong division of the Internet Society.

"Computer users have no control over modifications to the software, which may be used to collect personal data or filter other websites," Mok added.

Hewlett-Packard, the world's biggest PC maker, confirmed that it has been ordered to offer the software which blocks prescribed websites, Bloomberg reported.

At the beginning of this year the Chinese government ordered a purge of indecent content from the web.