According to a survey conducted by Kingsoft, one of China's leading software companies, 47% of all the junk e-mail received by China's Internet surfers contain viruses.

Of the 83,641 Internet users that answered the Kingsoft questionnaire, 54% said they are receiving one to five junk e-mails a day on average, and 37% are receiving five to 20 unsolicited mails.

In the second half of March, Kingsoft handed out its anti-spam questionnaire to 100,000 people in more than 100 Chinese cities, including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. The company spent over 4 million yuan (US$480,000) on the survey, the largest ever held in China. The Internet Society of China (ISC) said that by the end of last November, China's Internet servers had received altogether 150 billion spam e-mails, accounting for 30% of the country's total e-mails. To curb the accelerated spam proliferation in China, the ISC and some leading domestic Internet service providers, including Sina, Netease and 263, are calling for establishment of an anti- spam technology alliance and removal of the regulatory barriers.

Some insiders say Internet service providers and telecommunications operators should join hands to curb spam and safeguard network safety by working out more advanced screening technologies to stop junk e-mails at the source. However, another group is calling on China's lawmakers to enact laws against junk e-mail. "We cannot just rely on alert netizens and filtering by websites," said Kong Xiangmei, a software expert and deputy with the National People's Congress, China's top legislature.