China Launches New Campaign Against Online Porn

In yet another step to crack down on pornography in the country, the Chinese government is launching a new attack on online porn. China's Ministry of Public Security said that the six-month campaign will target cyber strip shows and sexually explicit images, stories and audio and video clips, according to the Xinhua News.

"The boom of pornographic content on the Internet has contaminated cyberspace and perverted China's young minds," Zhang Xinfeng, a deputy public security minister, told the Xinhua News.

This comes at the same time as two website operators were sentenced to four years in prison and a third man got one year for distributing pornographic movies online.

China has the world's second-biggest population of Internet users after the United States, with 137 million people online.

Although pornography in any form is illegal in China, state media have reported that access to the Internet and rising mobile phone usage in the country have increased Chinese citizens' ability to obtain adult entertainment.

"The inflow of pornographic materials from abroad and lax domestic control are to blame for the existing problems in China's cyberspace," Xinfeng said.

Chinese authorities are also launching an assault on mobile porn as ending pornographic text messages or images between cell phones can land Beijing residents in detention for two weeks and cost them fines of up to 3,000 yuan (about US $385), according to Xinhua.

Police raids have been executed on second-hand phone dealers who were found to be selling storage devices containing pornographic images and videos. The chips, which sold for five or six yuan (about US 60-80 cents) each, had the capacity to contain an hour-long video.

Within the past three weeks, police have arrested 19 dealers who now face jail terms of between six months and three years, Beijing public security authorities told Xinhua.