China's Internet watchdogs announced Tuesday they had shut down 68 porn Web sites, bringing the total number of blocked sites to 1,575 since the national anti-porn campaign was launched a month ago.

As of Feb. 2, some 148 blogs containing pornography and "lewd" contents were also closed, according to a statement issued by the office for cracking down on online porn and lewd content.

More than half of the closed sites were from southeast Chinese provinces including Jiangsu, Fujian, Zhejiang and Guangdong, the statement said.

"Further measures will be made to crack down the online porn and lewd contents, leaving no space for them on the Internet," an official from the office said.

The porn Web sites gained profits mainly through charging fixed telephone or cell-phone users to log onto the site, the official added.

In early January, seven government departments including the State Council's Information Office, Ministry of Public Security and Ministry of Culture, launched a crackdown campaign on porn Web sites. It later extended the campaign to mobile phone games, online novels, blogs, videos and radio programs.

So far, 41 people have been detained for disseminating porn on the Internet during the campaign.

(Xinhua News Agency February 4, 2009)