Yep, that’s right: China is now demanding that all PCs manufactured for Chinese use will have a special Chinese spyware installed that is meant to block pornography (whether you want it to or not).

This, of course, is China’s way of enforcing censorship even further on the general public, but everyone knows there are more devious plans underneath: total content control on every personal computer in the country.

Fortunately, none of these spyware-laden computers will come to the US (or anywhere outside the “People’s” Republic of China).

China is calling this spyware the “Green Dam” – an antidote to the “Yellow” plague of pornography. Some bloggers testing the software in China already complained that the software really slows down the computer. Those blog posts were quickly removed.

The question then become a moral and financial one. Morally, any one in the free West can quickly realize this is a no-win situation for the general public. Any content or actions on any computer can be monitored, censored, or simply shut off. Financially, having so many slower PCs in China only spells doom for their tech industry. If they can’t keep productivity up due to spyware-loaded computers, their overall output will be greatly diminished due to a cumulative effect.

Getting spyware by accident is already too frequent. And now having spyware purposely pre-loaded makes things even harder. What happens when a Chinese user gets infected with a rogue spyware and needs to run a spyware cleaner? Will that spyware cleaner be able to detect and eliminate the Chinese spyware? And then will the Chinese “Geek Squad” come racing over to your home and re-install their spyware that was “accidentally” removed? China needs to wake up.

For all of us still in the free world, make sure your antispyware software is up to date. Run a full spyware scan and keep yourself well protected.