Chinanews, Beijing, March 15 - “At present, there are 110 thousand authorized Internet cafes in China, and we believe it is fairly enough to meet the demands of the market,”said the director of the State Internet Cafes and Online Games Administrative Office on March 14.

 

Fourteen ministries and commissions, including the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Information Industry, jointly released a new regulation on Internet cafes and online games recently, which sets out clear requirements for Internet cafes operation in 2007, the most important one being to strictly control the scale of the market. That is to say, no new Internet cafes should be built in China.

 

It is believed that the new regulation will help to stop blind investment in the market, thus to cool down current overheat.

 

The regulation also urges local communication administrations to close all the unauthorized Internet cafes, and their illicit gains will all be confiscated. Besides, a fine of 5,000 to 30,000 yuan will be in on them (local industry and commerce administration can impose an extra fine of no more than 20,000 yuan on them, too). Officials or government departments indulgent to unauthorized Internet cafes will also be under penalty of forfeit of 50,000 to 300,000 yuan.