Chinese police confiscated seven illegal production lines of DVDs recently in three separate cases in south China, the national office for crackdown on pornographic and illegal publications said on Thursday.

A total of 6,315 parent discs were also confiscated in these cases occurring in south China's Guangdong and Hainan provinces, sources with the office said.

On Jan. 13, the Hainan provincial office for crackdown on pornographic and illegal publications conducted a surprise check on Hanan Wenguang Electronic Disc Co., Ltd. They discovered two illegal disc production lines and confiscated 5,360 pirated discs on the spot.

Four days after, police discovered two illegal production lines that were making pirated DVDs in Guangming Paper Mill in Bao'an District of Shenzen Municipality in Guangdong.

Police arrested 11 suspects on the spot and confiscated 29,000 pirated discs and 2,948 parent discs.

Since China confiscated the first illegal production line of discs in 1996, a total of 231 illegal production lines of discs, which can produce 220 million discs annually, have been seized, said Xu Hu, vice director of the public order management bureau under the Ministry of Public Security last July.

Xu said, "Most of the illegal production lines are smuggled from overseas and some were using cutting-edge technologies."

Five of the seven illegal production lines were imported from Japan and were seized soon after being put into operation, sources with the office said.

Illegal operations are the source of pirated discs and seizing these lines can effectively wipe out pirated discs in China, sources with the office said.

The office urged local public security bureaus to intensify their investigations and punish violators.

Legal companies that engaged in unlicensed production would risk having their licenses revoked, sources with the office said.

(Xinhua News Agency February 22, 2008)