Chinese in a stir-fry over spam

Chinese emails are being routinely blocked by western internet companies because of spam fears, according to Chinese MPs.

The members heard how the country was being routinely used by spammers to relay junk mail, which made much of it appearing in the US seeming to originate from China.

The parliament was told that a growing number of network administrators in the US and Europe have started blocking emails from servers in China, Taiwan and Korea.

The spammers, many of whom have had their own IP addresses blacklisted, use servers in Asian countries because they are not monitored as closely and are left open as anonymous springboards for junk mail.

Meanwhile, academics among the 2,987 provincial deputies attending the annual meeting of the National People's Congress called for tough new laws punishing spammers.

"The majority of the junk mail [is] not created in China, so why should [other countries] block mail from China?" asked Zeng Xiaozhen, a professor at Jilin University in the north eastern province of the same name.

He maintained that spam was a global issue and that China should make a law to punish its creators.

An article posted on the website of China's party mouthpiece the People's Daily called on the National People's Congress to pass a law banning the sending of junk email.

The newspaper claimed that tens of thousands of companies and websites in the US and Europe have blocked all email coming from Chinese servers.