More and more Chinese use text messages as a means of greeting and communication during the Spring Festival, the most important annual occasion for the Chinese. However, some people don't like getting short message greetings.

The Xinhua News Agency reported that Internet users in Guangzhou have launched a campaign to resist sending New Year wishes via text message.

The Internet users said these days, people simply download messages from the Internet and send them to each other, lacking sincerity.

These users believe stylized messages are devoid of human emotions compared with traditional door-to-door greetings during the Spring Festival.

They also said the large sending volume may generate a network jam and line the pockets of the telecom companies at the same time.

Statistics show over 12 billion text messages were sent during the Spring Festival period in 2006.

(CRI February 19, 2007)