China's commerce authorities uncovered 56,500 cases of illegal advertisements in the first 11 months of this year during a nationwide campaign to clear the media of such information, a senior official said on Thursday.

Zhou Bohua, director of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, said that the government would revoke the advertising licenses of media that frequently carried illegal adverts to undermine the market order and social stability.

Those who were found responsible would be handed over to judiciary departments in a timely fashion, he said.

The administration would strengthen its supervision of advertisements and focus on those promoting medicines, health food, cosmetics and beauty parlors, he said. "These sectors are closely related to people's health and liable to law violations."

In the first three quarters, a total of 36,293 misleading and illegal adverts publicized through the media were uncovered by the administration. Among them, 6,025 were about medicine, according to previous reports.

Zhou also said that from January to November the commerce authorities cracked 3,747 cases of pyramid selling. The marketing method was banned by China in 1998 for becoming "a synonym for cheating and hoodwinking" in the country.

About 41,100 pyramid selling groups were wiped out in the first 11 months, with 904,500 people "reeducated and de-mobbed". A further 3,648 were prosecuted.

The administration planned to set up a national database of pyramid selling organizers in order to crackdown on them "precisely", he said.

In China, people guilty of organizing and running pyramid schemes involving a large number of people faced prison terms of five years or more. They could also be ordered to repay up to five times the profits generated by their illegal business operations.

Last year, China investigated 2,081 pyramid selling cases worth more than 10 billion yuan (1.35 billion US dollars).

(Xinhua News Agency December 21, 2007)