Chinese police have received more than 13,000 reports about pornographic material on the Internet since the nation launched a campaign to restrict the spread of online pornography on April 12.

 

The number of reports about pornographic websites has increased from around 300 to nearly 700 every day. And 31 percent of reports received by police in this period were about pornographic websites, according to the Ministry of Public Security (MPS).

 

"The fight against pornographic websites has won wide support from Chinese people," said an MPS official.

 

A computer teacher, surnamed Jiang, from east China's Zhejiang Province said: "I'm disgusted by the pornographic material on the Internet, and deeply worried about the impact on children."

 

"We really need to crack down on Internet crimes and pornography and create a clean and healthy cyberspace for youngsters," Jiang said.

 

China has roughly 123 million Internet users, most of whom are young people.

 

Wu Heping, spokesman of the Ministry of Public Security, said recently that preliminary statistics show that nearly 80 percent of juvenile delinquents have been lured into crime by evil content on the Internet.

 

"In a high proportion of cheating, rape or robbery cases involving young people, the Internet is a factor," Wu said.

 

Chinese police last week said they had arrested a 21-year-old student for running five pornographic websites with 210,000 registered users.

 

Police also announced that they had closed 1,450 porn websites and deleted more than 30,000 obscene messages online since the launch of the campaign.

 

Over a six-month period, the campaign by the MPS and nine other government departments will crack down on illegal online activities such as distributing pornographic materials and organizing cyber strip shows, and purge the web of sexually-explicit images, stories, and audio and video clips.

 

The campaign will also target illegal online lotteries and contraband trade, fraud, and "content that spreads rumors and is of a slanderous nature".

 

(Xinhua News Agency May 3, 2007)