Police in the southern province of Guangdong have shut down a web site selling real-time pornography and arrested 33 people, including two Taiwanese.

The site, whose server was based in Taiwan, charged viewers -- most of whom were also in Taiwan -- to watch strip shows or other pornographic performances that were staged in China.

This operation started up in the second half of 2006 and took in more than 1 million yuan (137,000 U.S. dollars) in just three months.

Police said that 23 of the people arrested were performing for the site at 12 locations in Zhuhai. They were detained for 15 days.

The other 10 managed the operation; two of them are Taiwanese. Seven of the 10 managers were prosecuted, while three were released on bail.

The police also seized 28 computers as well as equipment used to stage these shows, along with 160,000 yuan.

The site is said to have been the most widely-visited pornographic site among those that were busted as part of last year's cyberspace clean-up, according to the Guangdong department of public security.

Chinese authorities shut down 44,000 domestic web sites and home pages and arrested 868 people while investigating 524 criminal cases during the campaign last year.

Another 1,911 people involved in 1,609 web-based pornographic activities were punished and authorities deleted more than 440,000 pornographic messages that had been posted online.

The campaign will continue until September, after the Beijing Olympic Games end, a meeting organized by the Ministry of Public Security, the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and 11 other central departments was told on Tuesday.

A statement from the meeting said "pornographic sources" were located in foreign countries and regions, while China was the "soil" for the growth of pornographic sites.

(Xinhua News Agency January 24, 2008)