Authorities handle 11,000 cases of porn, other abuses

Chinese authorities handled about 11,000 cases in 2019 in campaigns against pornography and illegal publications, with a record high of 308 major cases listed for thorough investigation, said a national watchdog said on Thursday.

Ten typical cases that were cracked by police in 2019 were made public on Thursday.

They involved the illegal publication and online spreading of erotic content, infringement upon minors’ rights and interests, racketeering by fake journalists and piracy, among other crimes, according to the National Office for the Fight Against Pornography and Illegal Publications.

Statistics from the office show that a total of 17.1 million illegal publications were confiscated last year.

Over 11.1 million harmful, obscene and pornographic items of information on the Internet were blocked.

And a total of 84,000 harmful websites were shut down for publishing vulgar content, said the office.

In one of the cases detailed by the authorities on Thursday, police in Shaoxing City in eastern China’s Zhejiang Province, confiscated over 20,000 copies of illegal publications.

The suspect in the case had sold around 6,300 such copies through an online auction platform since 2016, involving 1.3 million yuan (US$187,100).

In another case, police in the city of Qingdao in eastern China’s Shandong Province busted a gang of eight members who operated torrent sites for downloading pornographic materials for profit.

A total of 1,168 related websites were shut down, with over 24 million yuan involved.

In 2019, the office cooperated with Internet companies to deal with 6 million items of harmful online information.

The office received 270,000 tip-offs from the public and offered rewards of over 1.2 million yuan (US$172,700) for informants.

And around 3,600 people faced criminal penalties.