Chinese Porn Crackdown

China shuts down 60,000 porn sites and arrests 5,000 people in massive censorship crackdown

China has shut down more than 60,000 pornographic websites this year and arrested 5,000 people as it steps up a campaign against obscene material.

Beijing has run a highly publicised drive against lewd online content which it claims is overwhelming the country's internet and mobile phones and threatening the emotional health of children.

Critics have accused the Chinese government of deepening the crackdown, launched last December, and said censorship had blocked many sites with politically sensitive or even user-generated content.

Wang Chen, head of the State Council Information Office, said the offensive was vital.

'Our campaign has been a great success and this has not been achieved easily,' he said.

'We have made the internet environment much cleaner than before as there was a lot of pornography available.

'We have changed this situation and this has been well received by many sectors across society.

'But our campaign has not come to a stop. This will be a long battle.

'As long as there are people with bad motives who want to spread violent or pornographic information, we will have to continue our campaign to resolutely crack down on the spread of such information.'

Of the 4,965 suspects arrested, more than 1,300 received 'criminal punishment' - with 58 jailed for five years or more, Mr Wang said.

The government checked the content of 1.79million websites and deleted 350million pornographic and lewd articles, pictures and video footage.

With an estimated 450million internet users - more than a third of the country's population - China has a bigger online population than any other country.