China's Internet censors have blinked. In the face of opposition ranging from PC makers abroad to bloggers at home, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has backed away, at least for now, from a hastily conceived directive that all new PCs sold from July 1 should carry filtering software.

The ministry said the requirement to pre-install Internet-filtering programs called "Green Dam" and "Youth Escort" had been postponed indefinitely. It cited concerns by overseas manufacturers that they could not comply with the directive in time as the reason for the delay. But Internet activists and bloggers who had opposed the software as intrusive and unsafe also took credit for the rollback.

China is to delay the launch of a controversial policy to force manufacturers to install mandatory filtering software on new computers. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s climbdown on the compulsory installation of the ‘Green Dam Youth Escort’ filter comes just a day before the order was due to come into effect.

The state news agency Xinhua, which revealed the decision, did not say why the implementation of the policy had been postponed.

 Cao Junwu is known for intrepid coverage of breaking news events such as the Sichuan earthquake and Shandong flood and for enterprise pieces on China’s computer game industry.

A reporter for the respected Southern Weekend, Cao was one of the first reporters at the scene of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, traveling by helicopter and hiking along cliffs to reach the devastated area, which was cut of from the world. His moving blog and newspaper coverage conveyed the despair, courage and resilience of the survivors.