China needs a law to restrict a "violence culture" that is permeating in the country's media to protect the country's vulnerable young souls from being poisoned, a national legislator said on the sideline of the ongoing annual parliamentary session on Tuesday.

No other alternative but legislation can limit the spread of violence-dominated contents in media by clearly define where and how it can be carried, said Peng Fuchun, a deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature.

Peng, a philosophy professor from Wuhan University, central Hubei Province, said a culture of violence is propagating rapidly in China as a result of social transition, leaving ill impact on social morals and blighting juvenile's growth.

Films, video products and Internet are major media where violence contents prevail, according to Peng.

The lack of a film rating system and an effective TV products censorship has left teenagers exposed to media's violent scenes, said Peng, who also blamed film and TV producers who promote their products with detailed, vivid description of violence, horror and crime as selling points.

Many online games and about 70 percent of non-education Internet information contain violence, according to Fu.

"Online games about terrors and wars give young people a chance to taste the pleasure of fighting and killing in the cyber space, while heroes and knight-errants in films, TV dramas and cartoons are unluckily at the same time killers, who always become teenagers' idols to follow and imitate in the real world," Fu said.

The lawmaker admitted that it is impossible to ban the culture of violence, and simply putting it under the attacks from the public opinion can neither solve the problem.

"We must make a law to restrict its spread," Fu said.

He also said psychological counseling services should be offered to teenagers to help keep them away from violence.

China has seen a 68 percent rise in juvenile crimes in the past five years and that figure is going to rise, according to a survey by the China Youth and Children Studies research group early this year.

A 13-year-old student in northern Hebei Province killed three people and burned a house last summer allegedly after watching a TV drama called Zhui Xiong, or Hunting the Murderer, in which the hero killed several people to revenge his father's death.

A report released by the China National Children's Center last year said that 13 percent of Chinese Internet users under the age of 18 are Internet addicts.

(Xinhua New Agency March 6, 2007)