China deletes millions of porn files in bid to cleanse the web

Mainland China deleted more than three million pieces of pornographic content from the internet last year as part of a campaign to cleanse the country's online sphere.

Zhou Huilin, a deputy director of the National Anti-Pornography and Anti-Illegal Publications Office, said his office had been "remarkably effective" last year, Xinhua reported yesterday.

The mainland has been cracking down on internet porn for a decade, and has been stepping up its oversight of the web in recent months.

In 2006, a 28-year-old man who ran the country's most popular pornographic website community, with up to 600,000 members, was sentenced to life in prison.

More than 10,000 websites or pages that contained what was described as illegal or harmful information were also shut down by authorities, according to the Xinhua report.

The authorities also confiscated more than 16 million illegal publications - including 12 million pirated ones - and dealt with 212 cases that involved fake journalists or bogus media organisations.