YNOT – As many as 80 percent of the violent criminals in one Chinese prison descended into a hell of their own making after becoming addicted to online games, according to a documentary aired on the country’s state-run China Central Television.Confession of a Murderer: Focus on Pornography and Violence in Online Games presents an indictment of and a strong warning about the negative effects of gaming. Among the societal ills the program lays at the feet of video games are murder, drug addiction and teen pregnancy.

Western analysts see the program as propaganda to support China’s recent crackdown on the internet as an outlet for personal expression and a source for information condemning Chinese officials and policies. On Jan. 1, 2008, the government began a massive effort to “sanitize” the Chinese web, claiming the medium’s vast amount of “unapproved” content corrupts society. Pornography and speech critical of official policy were the first targets, followed in July by bans on sex-related and medical research sites as well as video games that promote drug use, “obscenity,” gambling or crimes such as rape, vandalism and theft.

In August, authorities embarked upon a campaign targeting foreign Web hosts, websites and payment processors who provide services to purveyors of banned materials. In late October, the crackdown expunged thousands of works of literature from the Web, saying the material “included pornographic content,” “used provocative or privacy violating titles to draw attention” or “blatantly talked about one-night stands, wife swapping, sex abuses and violence that disregarded common decency.” In November, officials took the battle to the mobile airwaves.

Google was among the major targets during the cleanup. The search giant disappeared from the Chinese Web for several months while it wrangled with government officials over what material must be omitted from the search results presented to Chinese users. The massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft also disappeared from the Web after developers and officials could not reach an agreement about the game’s content.

In terms of population, China is the world’s largest country, and its citizens compose the fastest-growing segment in the cybersphere. According to the Chinese government, about 210 million Chinese play online games.

Other programs recently aired by state-run television included segments indicting social-networking sites and games for lowering educational test scores. In one, games were blamed for drug addiction because they encourage teens to use cough medicine and methamphetamine in order to prolong consciousness for extended periods of intense game play.