China shuts down 84 more sites in porn crackdown

BEIJING - China Wednesday shut down 84 additional websites for containing ‘pornographic and lewd content’ in its month-long campaign against online porn, bringing the number of blocked sites to 175.

The Special Operation Office said in a statement that government departments would step up efforts to continue to close illegal websites and ’severe penalties’ would be meted out to violators of law.

Public distribution of pornography is illegal in China.

The campaign was launched earlier this month by the State Council’s Information Office, the public security and culture ministries and four other government agencies.

Previously, the country had blacklisted 50 websites, including search engines Google, Baidu and MSN China which were accused of providing obscene content and of being slow to delete erotic materials.

According to China’s Internet Network Information Center, the number of Internet users in China has touched 298 million in 2008, overtaking the US as the nation with the world’s largest online population.