Tuesday, Mar 16, 2010    Text size: 

BEIJING — China has pulled the plug on more than 140,000 mobile WAP sites that offer pornography for mobile phone users.

According to News.Xinhuanet.com, the move comes as the country continues its five month campaign against Internet porn.

The deputy director of the national office against pornographic and illegal publication said the action had, “clearly cleansed the Internet environment.”

“In the next stage, we’ll target serious criminal activity related to porn mobile WAP sites with servers overseas,” he said.

China’s crackdown on Internet porn began last year, focusing in particular on Shanghai, Beijing, Guangdong, Zhejiang and Anhui where many WAP sites are registered.

In China’s ongoing effort to remove porn, a judge recently ruled that production, replication, publication, sale and spread of electronic information targeted at minors under 14 via Internet or mobile WAP sites was a crime.

More than 150,000 items of lewd content has been deleted or blocked on the Internet and about 300,000 items have been deleted.

Nine government and Communist Party of China departments are involved in the crackdown, including police, publicity, health, information technology, banking, radio, film and television.