The Ministry of Public Security says the six-month campaign will target cyber
strip shows and sexually explicit images, stories and audio and video clips,
according to the Xinhua News Agency.
"The boom of pornographic content on the Internet has contaminated cyberspace
and perverted China's young minds," Zhang Xinfeng, a deputy public security
minister, was quoted as saying Thursday.
The campaign also will target illegal online lotteries and contraband trade,
fraud and "content that spreads rumors and is of a slanderous nature," Zhang
said at a news conference.
In China's biggest online porn case to date, a Web site operator, Chen Hui, was
sentenced in November to life in prison. The government said Chen's Web site
had more than 9 million pornographic images and more than 600,000 registered
users.
China has the world's second-biggest population of Internet users after the
United States, with 137 million people online.
The communist government encourages Internet use for education and business but
tries to block access to material considered obscene or subversive.
"The inflow of pornographic materials from abroad and lax domestic control are
to blame for the existing problems in China's cyberspace," Zhang said.
According to Xinhua, the Beijing Reformatory for Juvenile Delinquents said 33.5
percent of its detainees were influenced by violent online games or erotic Web
sites when they committed crimes such as robbery and rape.
