China's high-profile campaign to clean up online pornography is expanding into college campuses with the Ministry of Education on Sunday lashing out at some school Websites for making money from porn.

"We strongly condemn web hosts for making 'unlawful' money by distributing pornographic information," said vice-minister of education Li Weihong.

"Student netizens are easily influenced and perverted by such information as they are impressionable and do not have a solid hold on their values," Li said.

There are 44 million student netizens in China, about one third of the total Internet users in the country, according to Li.

The education ministry will open a section on its Website for the public to report violating campus Websites and is drafting a guideline to regulate campus Internet services.

On May 16, police authorities in south China's Hainan Province banned the Website of Qiongzhou Middle School which the police accused of containing large numbers of sexually explicit pictures and links to other pornographic Websites.

"Students and their parents have shown great support for the campaign," Li said, "and nearly 100,000 college students from five provinces have made an online pledge to say no to pornographic Websites."

Li said real-name registration for those logging on to campus Websites should be an effective way to curb the spread of harmful information across campus cyber space.

Li also called on college instructors to brush up on their Internet knowledge to "get to know the mentality of today's students from the Net."

The Ministry of Public Security (MPS) and nine other government departments launched a six-month campaign in April to crack down on illegal online activities such as distributing pornographic materials and organizing cyber strip shows. The campaign hopes to purge the web of sexually explicit images, stories, and audio and video clips.

By mid-May, Chinese police had cracked 244 cases and detained 270 suspects involved in online pornography, according to the MPS.

(Xinhua News Agency May 29, 2007)