ESWN translates a Beijing Times article that marks the death of the Green Dam filtering software experiment:
Last Friday, a mysterious person tipped us that the office of the Green Dam-Youth Escort Software Project in the Beijing Huajie Building has been closed down with all workers being sent away. That day, our reporter went to Room B411 in the Beijing Huajie Building during office hours. The door was padlocked and the inside was barren with without any desks, chairs or other office facilities.
The Green Dam project was run jointly by the Beijing Dazheng Language Recognition and Processing Research Institute and the Zhengzhou Jinhui Computer System Engineering Limited Company. The Beijing Dazheng general manager Chen Xiaomeng acknowledged that their office in the Huajie Building had been shut down at the end of last month and the more than 30 workers have been sent off.
There are still workers from Zhengzhou and they are also being sent off gradually. “These workers cannot come back to work at the Beijing Dazheng because they were workers for the Green Dam project for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. We cannot just take over.”
Chen Xiaomeng said that the Green Dam-Youth Escort project was established in May 2008. Zhengzhou Jinhui’s
and Beijing Dazheng’s won the bid. These two products were later combined to form the Green Dam-Youth Escort software. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology paid 41.7 million yuan for the software which was to be downloaded by citizens for free. “We really lack financial support. We hung on for a year now, but we really cannot go on.” Yesterday, Chen Xiaomeng said that the government paid 41.7 million yuan, of which Beijing Dazheng received 19.9 million yuan and Zhengzhou Jinhui received 21.8 million yuan. But this only covered the expenses for one year from 2008 to 2009. Since last year, the two companies have not received a cent to cover operating expenses.
