The Internet Society of China (ISC) is reporting that China is receiving 46 billion junk e-mails per year, making it the world's second most popular destination for spammers, behind only the US.

By November 2003, China's Internet servers had received altogether 150 billion spam e-mails, accounting for 30% of the country's total e-mails.

Despite the ISC's publicizing two groups of spammers' IP addresses and setting a deadline for them to stop sending junk e-mail, the situation has failed to improve. "There are two major reasons for this," said Huang Mingsheng, the president of 263 Group, an Internet service provider in China. "One is the lack of legal punishment for spammers, and the other is that many e-mail service providers are reluctant to invest in anti-spam technology," he said.

In the recently concluded National People's Congress (NPC), Kong Xiangmei, an NPC deputy, submitted a proposal for enacting a law against junk e-mail, admitting the problem cannot be revolved by relying on filtering by websites–it has to be dealt with by the law. In April, the State Council will open a seminar to discuss laws and regulations to enhance Internet safety.