The Chinese government has taken new precautions for internet censorship which will limit ordinary citizens the ability to build personal websites and to open hundreds of other websites offering films, video games and other forms of entertainment.

The Chinese authoriteies have said that the new precautions are to protect children from pornography and will also limit piracy of films, music and television shows. The censorship will also prevent Internet scams.

However some groups are seeing the move to further censor the Internet as a way of enhancing the governments already strict control of any organized political opposition.

Top propaganda and security officials have spoken out in anger and confusion with the need for such strict censorship on the Internet on ideological and security grounds.

The “Internet has become an important avenue through which anti-China forces infiltrate, sabotage and magnify their capabilities for destruction,” wrote the public security minister, Meng Jianzhu, in the Dec. 1 issue of Qiushi, a magazine published by the Communist Party’s Central Committee.

“Therefore it represents a new challenge to the public security authority in maintaining national security and social stability,” he said.

The newly announced restrictions are the government’s broadest effort to control the Internet since last June, when it tried to require manufacturers to install Internet filtering software on all new computers, experts said. Officials scaled back that program, known as the Green Dam-Youth Escort, after an outcry by both ordinary Internet users and corporations.