Associated PressThe government's apparent retreat, one day before the rule was to kick in, follows intense criticism of the software plan at home and abroad since it was first reported online June 7 by The Wall Street Journal.
China's official Xinhua news agency late Tuesday quoted a Ministry of Industry and Information Technology spokesman as saying that some PC makers had said they had too little time to prepare for the Wednesday deadline. "Based on this factual situation, postponing of pre-installation is allowed," the spokesman said.
The report didn't say how long the delay could last, and officials couldn't be reached for comment.
The Xinhua report made clear that the government isn't explicitly abandoning the filtering software, which is called Green Dam-Youth Escort. "We will encourage PC makers who have already pre-installed the software to actively expand the market," the spokesman said in the Xinhua report, adding the government is "adhering to our path" and plans to continue providing the software free online in schools and Internet cafes. "As for how to do pre-installation on other PCs, MIIT will further solicit opinions from various sides, perfect the plan, improve our methods, and complete the relevant work," the spokesman said.
The delay provides relief for global PC companies. They had feared that implementing the rules would leave them open to legal liability and charges of abetting censorship -- especially with so little time to test the software. But they were also reluctant to openly defy the government, as China is the second-biggest PC market by unit sales after the U.S., and also home to much of the world's PC production.
In China, "green" is a term used for online content free from pornography and other illicit material. The government said the software was intended to block children from viewing online pornography and other "harmful content."
Isaac Mao, a fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, said the delay showed that the Green Dam plan "has lost legitimacy" and that the government wouldn't be able to enforce it. "Of course, the face-saving way is to say 'postpone,'" he said, but Internet users "are declaring their victory."
Tuesday's announcement follows complaints from the U.S., the European Union and other governments, as well as from global PC makers and Internet users in China and abroad. Some critics said the plan appeared to be aimed at extending the government's massive Internet censorship into people's homes and offices, and others worried it could expose PCs to hackers or cause technical problems. Researchers who studied the software found evidence that it blocked a range of content including sites covering sensitive political issues.
The ministry spokesman on Tuesday repeated the government's position that the software is designed only to block "poisonous content" from young people, and said that it "definitely has no capability for collecting users' information or monitoring their Internet behavior."
Obama administration officials said they welcomed the delay. "We understand that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is delaying the implementation of the Green Dam software requirement. The United States welcomes the opportunity to engage with the relevant Chinese authorities on our concerns regarding the software," a U.S. Trade Representative spokeswoman said in a statement.
The U.S. government applied pressure on the Chinese government to reconsider the mandate in recent days, with agencies including the office of the Trade Representative and the Department of Commerce actively lobbying on behalf of PC makers, according to people familiar with the talks.
It wasn't clear whether the companies would have been able to meet the requirements by the deadline. "I honestly don't know what would have happened" if the mandate wasn't delayed, said Dean Garfield, president of the Information Technology Industry Council, a trade group that was one of 22 business groups that sent a letter to Premier Wen Jiabao last week urging that the plan be reconsidered.
Computer makers and the U.S. government were concerned not only about the deadline, but about the nature of the mandate. The computer industry supports giving parents the ability to block access to offensive content, but is opposed to any requirement that specifies a particular company's product, Mr. Garfield said.
The delay hasn't made the issue go away, said Mark Bohannon, general counsel and senior vice president of public policy for the Software and Information Industry Association, another trade group tracking the effort.
On Tuesday, a spokeswoman for Hewlett-Packard Co. which is No. 1 in global PC shipments and revenue, said it is working with the Information Technology Industry Council "to seek additional information, clarify open questions and monitor developments on this matter." In a statement, Dell Inc. didn't address the delay explicitly, but said, "We respect the Chinese government's stated goal of protecting children by filtering access to pornography through the Internet. We'll continue to advise customers worldwide about widely available Web-filtering software that has been thoroughly tested and we know performs well on Dell computers."
Taiwan's Acer Inc., the world's No. 3 PC seller, and China's Lenovo Group Ltd., No. 4, had both said that they planned to comply with the Green Dam rule. Sony Corp. had begun selling laptops installed with Green Dam, according to resellers of Sony's Vaio computers in Beijing and Shanghai. One salesman in Shanghai said many customers complained about having the software on their computers. Sony's headquarters didn't respond to requests for comment.
Chinese officials plainly failed to anticipate the intense backlash against their plans, which grew out of efforts in recent years to use similar filtering software on school PCs. Local media have carried heavy criticism of the plan, prompting repeated government attempts to defend its decision.
The government's effort to control the Internet -- including sophisticated network software, government monitors, and sometimes harsh punishment for breaking rules -- does keep out much information, and occasionally helps the government ferret out dissent.
But the Internet has enabled levels of individual expression and discussion that are unprecedented in Communist China. Users who want access to blocked content usually easily find ways to circumvent the system.
Indeed, the Green Dam plan appears to have widened public interest in China in questions about government intrusiveness and censorship. Rebecca MacKinnon, a journalism professor at the University of Hong Kong who studies the Chinese Internet, said that searches for the term fan qiang, or "climbing over the wall" -- shorthand for circumventing China's "Great Firewall" -- soared after news of Green Dam became public in early June.
—Bai Lin, Kersten Zhang, Ben Worthen and Amy Schatz contributed to this article.
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