Over the past 18 months authorities in China have launched a string of crackdowns on what it calls "pornographic and lewd" content. Last year alone more than 15,000 pornographic websites, including more than 11,000 mobile WAP sites, were shut down or blocked.

Now a number of Chinese educationalists have gone further and suggested that children under 12 years old should be prevented by law from using mobile phones to protect them from the influence of pornography. More than 230 million of China's net users now use mobile Internet applications - around 60% of all web users. And of these nearly three-quarters are aged 10 to 29.