The Ministry of Public Security said the campaign will focus on cyber strip shows and sexually explicit photos, video, text and audio clips. The Internet in China is reported to be one of the most tightly controlled in the world, using automatic filters and manual monitoring to weed out, and eventually prosecute, illegal porn.
According to the OpenNet Initiative, an organization comprised of American and British universities that studies online censorship, China closely monitors blogs and chatrooms manually, and uses automated filters to prevent posting of sexually explicit keywords and terms.
OpenNet also said the country uses these techniques to prevent information from other countries to enter China through the Internet, in order to prevent Chinese citizens from discussing forbidden topics, including but not limited to sex and pornography.
In November, a Chinese webmaster was sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of operating a site that featured more than 9 million pornographic images.
"The boom of pornographic content on the Internet has contaminated cyberspace and perverted China's young minds," said Zhang Xinfeng, a deputy public security minister.
The Xinhua state news agency reported that a third of juvenile detainees at the Beijing Reformatory for Juvenile Delinquents were influenced by erotic websites, among other things, when they committed crimes, including rape.