China closes 274 `illegal` websites

Beijing: China has closed a total of 274 "illegal" websites containing "pornographic and violent contents" since July, the government said Tuesday. The State Internet Information Office also fined over 300 websites for illegal operations.

Several government agencies jointly launched a campaign in mid July to reduce children`s access to potentially harmful information during the summer vacation, the Office said in a statement. A large number of the websites were not registered or registered with false information while a few of them disguised themselves through stealing domain names and servers of some deserted websites, state-run Xinhua news agency reported quoting the statement. Besides spreading pornography and violence, some websites were also caught spreading false medical information, it said. PTI