Beijing last night was host to the opening of Spamhaus's China operations. The anti-spam organization known for it's blocking of global spammers and assisting governments in crafting legislation to fight unsolicited bulk email, will be opening a new site at Spamhaus.cn.

Last evening's activities took place at Beijing's Alfa Lounge and included foreign and local journalists, as well as representatives from technology companies.

"Our mission is to help Chinese email and technology providers rid themselves of companies who use the servers to send bulk unsolicited email around the globe. Already a number of email providers in China have started to use the Spamhaus Block List and we're getting good feedback from our partners," stated a representative of Spamhaus based in China.

Last month, the Internet Society of China (ISC) invited Spamhaus's Richard Cox to Beijing and Xi'an for high-level talks with corporate and government bodies. The discussions culminated in a greater understanding on the Chinese side of what Spamhaus plans to do in Asia and how it can assist Internet Service Providers (ISP) in China with removing illegal spamgangs.

Spamhaus was started in the United Kingdom by Steve Linford. The organization is staffed by volunteers around the world who work together to find, isolate, and extract spam-based servers. The group recently proposed a .mail top-level domain name as a weapon to help system administrators better filter unsolicited bulk email. Use of the organizations exploit and spam block lists are free.

According to Spamhaus, China currently has three of the world's worst spam ISPs: PCCW, Chinanet in Chongqing, and Chinanet in Guangdong. Though the world's worst spammers are not Chinese companies and individuals, foreign spammers–particularly those from North America–take advantage of China's lax infrastructure and oversight to send their bulk emails.