1,500 Porn Sites in China Shut Down

China: Authorities shut down more than 1,500 pornographic sites in an effort to clean-up the Internet content, according to a report on Wednesday by state media.

The Special Operation Office for the Crackdown on Online Porn and Lewd Content, a government agency which supervise online contents, has also deleted more than a hundred blogs containing vulgar messages and removed more than 47,000 sexually-explicit pictures from the Internet.

With the campaign to sanitize the online media, authorities also ordered Internet giants including MSN, Baidu, and Google to block people from accessing sexually-explicit websites.  Other popular search engines were also warned by the government not to link indecent online contents as violators will be shut down.

Earlier, Baidu and Google have issued public apologies and said they are adopting new measures to block people from accessing pornographic websites.  Meanwhile, Google officials said they have already deleted links to vulgar contents and promised they will continue to block porn sites from appearing from their web pages.

According to Xinhua report, more than 40 people were detained in the crackdown of porn sites.

Meanwhile, Chinese authorities said they will continue the campaign against pornographic sites as these materials will have a negative impact on the morality especially of the youths.

Apart from shutting down pornographic sites, Chinese government has been known to practice leniency in terms of handling online contents.  Previously, authorities shut down websites which have a political tone, especially those which are against the government.

According to Internet research firm comScore, China accounts for 18 percent of Internet users worldwide, or 180 million people, even surpassing the United States in terms of Web users.

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