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Crackdown on slander against leadership

Jiang Zemin

Illegal political publications are accused of making malicious forecasts

The mainland will crack down further on illegal political publications that have criticised the leadership and carried 'malicious' forecasts, the China News Service reported yesterday.

Illegal political and pornographic publications and pirated music and movies were the biggest headaches for the mainland's publications authorities, a senior official from the State Press and Publications Administration was quoted as saying.

Fan Weiping , director of the administration's publication market supervision department, said the government had made great effort - but little progress - in outlawing books and publications that slandered the new leadership, exaggerated power struggles and contained malicious forecasts of the mainland's economic, social and cultural development.

'Publications inciting separatism in ethnic minority regions and threatening national unification are rampant in some areas. The illegal religious cults have used various means and used all kinds of opportunities to spread their counter-revolutionary publications,' he was quoted as saying.

Mr Fan said the authorities launched two inspections, one in May and one this month, and found illegal publications had been openly on sale in many areas.

President Hu Jintao has replaced Jiang Zemin as the chairman of the Central Military Commission, and the demand for information about the new leadership has prompted the publication of many legal and illegal books on Mr Hu and other leaders.

Mr Fan said that pornographic publications were markedly on the increase, even involving state-owned publishing houses in some cases.

Publishing houses in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Dalian were penalised this year for making money out of selling book licences to illegal publishers of pornographic books.

He said many publishing houses had recently published several books and novels about one-night stands and sex diaries.

Pirated audio and video productions remained a serious problem. Guangzhou authorities found some legal enterprises were involved in manufacturing fake products in a July crackdown in Panyu , in which they confiscated 5.7 million pirated discs.

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