BEIJING: Chinese authorities have banned 1,414 works of on-line literature on the grounds that it was pornographic in a nationwide campaign to eradicate "lewd" contents from the Internet, the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) said in a statement Tuesday.

About 30,000 web links to the banned works and 20 on-line literature websites were closed after scrutiny of about 4,000 literature websites by more than 50 experts organized by the GAPP since January, the statement said.

The administration would also establish laws and regulations on the publishing of literature online, the statement said.

The move is the latest in a string of drives to crack down on pornographic and lewd content on the Internet.

In June, the government ordered all new personal computers produced or sold in China after July 1 to carry "Green Dam-Youth Escort," a filtering software designed to block pornographic content.

The software was declared "not compulsory" by the government in August after it aroused huge controversy, as Internet users accused it of privacy invasion and blocking information.

Also in June, the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center (CIIRC) "strongly condemned" Google's Chinese portal for providing what the agency said were links to pornography and lewd information that violated national regulations.

The search engine giant swiftly pledged that it would take all necessary steps to clean up pornographic search results in its Chinese-language portal, Google.cn.