China bans erotic banana eating

The eating of bananas erotically online in China has been banned this week. Consuming the fruit in an erotic manner, while live streaming, was outlawed by officials. Since this enforcement, protests against the bans have commenced. Since, a man filmed himself eating a banana in an ‘erotic’ manner, with the Chinese embassy in London as his backdrop. The video filmed by Phil Watson has gone viral since it was uploaded to Youtube.

President, Xi Jinping told delegates from some of the world’s leading technology companies, that government action is needed to strengthen “civilised behaviour” online. He called to “rehabilitate the cyber ecology.” His comments were live tweeted, despite its ban by Beijing.

Stretching over 21,000 kilometres, the Great Wall of China was built from the 7th century to control the borders and for the control of transport. Today, the Great Firewall of China controls what travels into China on the Internet, based on its good or bad influence on the country.

The Beijing-controlled news company, CCTV, reported that Live-streaming platforms such as PandaTV and the most popular YY, have been warned to dump the bananas. Constant monitoring for any hint of illicit fruit consumption will now be a requirement.

There has been a recent boom in live streaming with a China Daily newspaper reporting that there are more than 100 live-streaming platforms on which young “hosts” broadcast their lives. {{w|YY} has more than 120 million active users and had revenues last year of 5.9bn yen, which equates to $105M Australian dollars.

China is a heavily regulated internet country already, with it employing up to 100,000 people to monitor internet use. As of September 2015, up to 3000 sites have been blocked by china. This includes websites such as Facebook. Websites can be banned entirely or blocked during times of tension. The Golden Shield, colloquially known as the Great Firewall of China, was set up in 1998 to keep a watchful eye on its 670 million web surfers, who are visiting over 4.13 million websites.

The punishment of viewing blocked material, or breaking Chinese law can mean jail time or a fine of up to $1800.