The case, the largest of its kind in Shanghai, involves 95,000 books, 4,537 of which were considered to have a bad influence on children. They originate from Japan but are copied and printed in China.

Deputy Director of the Huangpu Police Bureau Ma Huaihai said that in April, police started noticing that every evening many people - including primary and middle school students - paid rather a lot of attention to a certain grocery store. They made a search and the book dealers were caught with less than 6,000 forbidden Japanese cartoon books.

Further investigations led police to arrest more suspects and another 90,000 obscene cartoon books were seized.

The police said most of the books with Chinese versions had been channelled into Shanghai through neighbouring provinces.

A sales network has been formed in Shanghai.

"The sales on the first and second levels of the network made huge profits and some of the suspects had already bought apartments and cars with the proceeds," Ma said.

He said many dealers sold books near primary and middle schools. "Some pictures show explicit scenes of sexual abuse, which could be very damaging to a child," Ma said.

Some boy students have since been seen making obscene gestures to girls, he said.

Police have tracked the source of the books to Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Guangdong provinces. Called "pocket books," they are fairly discreet, but the pictures are easily understood.

(China Daily 06/28/2001)