China has launched a crackdown against major websites that officials accused of threatening morals by spreading pornography and vulgarity, including the dominant search engines Google and Baidu.

China’s Ministry of Public Security and six other government agencies announced the campaign at a meeting on Monday, state television reported, showing officials hauling digital equipment away from one unidentified office.

Now wander over to the People’s Daily Online and drift a little down the page and find a photo of three women in a cage, which links to three photos entitled Mexico nude activists potest [sic] for animal rights . The women are, in fact, not “nude” as the People’s Daily claims. They are showing quite a bit of uncovered territory, though it is obvious that they are wearing their skivs. The two major Chinese official news websites – People’s Daily and Xinhua – always have a tabloid thumbnail photo section somewhere on their main pages linking to scantily clad women from around the world, though they are never nude.

In the words of Cai Mingzhao, a deputy chief of the State Council Information Office, “Some websites have exploited loopholes in laws and regulations. They have used all kinds of ways to distribute content that is low-class, crude and even vulgar, gravely damaging mores on the Internet.”

And this on a day when the People’s Daily shows a trio of Mexican women in a cage and redefines the term “nude” as females in bras and panties. Don’t know if there is anything one can really make from this one. Just another day in the lives of the “brain police.”

Some 1.4 billion people living at the brink of extreme poverty are in developing countries. Any economic crisis could result in the most serious consequences for these people.

One rule of thumb I’ve learned to live with is that if I’m around someone who refers to himself in the third person I instinctively start looking for cover. At the risk of sounding provocative, I have to wonder what percentage of that 1.4 billion is here in China.  Whenever I go to Beijing now I start humming, “Where have all the migrants gone, long time passing.” A good place to start looking for “serious consequences” is here, the villages in the countryside that have supplied the human fuel that has kept this revved up engine humming. When the work dries up there’s nowhere left to go but home. Or as Frost so aptly wrote it: “Home is the place where, when you have to go there,/They have to take you in.” And going home they are, though there doesn’t seem to be a lot of joy in their return. The frightening question that everyone has been trying to avoid is “What do you do when there’s nowhere left to go but home?”

And on a possibly related note – though I am still unclear how it all hooks up, I fear it spells out where this is heading – today I spent a few hours with friends who live in a large and relatively new development close by the Water Park, one of the prime cuts of the developing middle class Tianjin. They bought in three years ago and things looked pretty good: walkways, clubhouse, a large pond stocked with fish, a quiet refuge a good way off the street. In every sense a fair little haven to escape to.  But that’s all changed in less time than it takes to say…. Well there you go. Said and done. What is at the heart of it is hard to nail down, though it seems to stem from a shady land deal, an arrest of one of the principals, a withholding of deeds, disgruntled homeowners refusing to pay monthly service fees and an ad hoc association of one form or another banding together and firing the management company (wuye) who sabotaged the place on their way out, leaving a mess for the new wuye who lasted all of four days before throwing up their hands and disappearing with whatever was left to take.

It’s no longer a sight to behold. Garbage is piling up, barriers that kept walkways free of cars have been destroyed, turning paths into access roads to freestyle parking zones, the guardhouse at the entrance sacked and empty, and no one accountable to be found at all. From prime cut to gristle in less time than it takes to say …. You get the picture.

But back at the People’s Daily I learn that

During the financial crisis and its resulting global economic turmoil, China’s ability to maintain its own high-speed growth is its biggest contribution to the global economy.

“Migrants heading back home” has become a common story, which speaks directly to growth or, more accurately, the lack of it. I am just as clueless as to where this is all heading as the professionals in the biz of predicting where it’s all heading are. They all keep telling us things like, “We’re sailing into new waters here,” or “If there’s a bottom we haven’t seen it yet,” which is just another way of saying, “No one’s got a clue.”

But the People’s Daily Online optimistically throws around a lot of numbers which I don’t imagine are very comforting to those in the countryside who are finding their way home long before the annual Spring Festival crush.

However, the global banking crisis had little direct impact on China. China has strong foreign exchange reserves, a fiscal surplus which accounts for 1% of its GDP, and a current account surplus which is in excess of 10% of the GDP. These three factors has [sic] enabled China to adopt a proactive fiscal policy to strengthen construction in infrastructure, environment, social security, education, health care, to stimulate domestic demand and to upgrade export.

And all of this in a country where a blast of Siberian cold and a few inches of snow closed several major arterial highways bleeding and feeding the capital for two days this week. And when I say a few inches, I’m being generous.

But an email I received today from a young Qinghai student asks the better and more relevant question: “Happy chorsmas!!!!!!! how was you been in there?”

Not bad in there at all as long as I got the People’s Daily Online to keep it all clear. So, how was you been out there?