More than 15,000 pornographic websites, including over 11,000 mobile WAP sites, have been shut down or blocked in 2009, an official from the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) said Tuesday.

"More than 1.5 million items of lewd content have been deleted from the Internet" during the same period, said Mao Xiaomao, vice director of the GAPP's anti-illegal or banned publications bureau.

Among 65.96 million illegal publications confiscated last year, 1.44 million had pornographic contents, Mao said.

Sun Jungong, spokesman of the Supreme People's Court, said China's courts have concluded trials of 1,273 cases of porn-related criminal cases in the first ten months of last year, involving a total of 1,580 people.

The Supreme People's Court was making efforts to improve relevant legal interpretation on mobile-related pornographic cases, which was expected to be introduced in the near future, according to Sun.

In a legal interpretation issued by the Supreme People's Court and Supreme People's Procuratorate in 2004, makers and distributors of pornographic materials sent through the Internet, mobile phones and other communication devices could face penalties as severe as life imprisonment.

China intensified its fight against online porn recently.

On Dec. 8, the country launched a new round of crackdown on spreading pornographic contents through Internet or mobile WAP sites to "purify the social environment." The campaign is expected to run to May.