China shut down more than 60,000 pornographic websites this year, netting almost 5,000 suspects in the process, a government spokesman said on Thursday, vowing no let-up in its campaign against obscene material.

Beijing has run a highly publicized drive against smutty and lewd content on the Internet and cell phones, threatening the emotional health of children.

Wang Chen, head of the State Council Information Office said the campaign has been a great success.

"We have made the Internet environment much cleaner than before as there was a lot of pornography available," he told a news conferenece. "We have changed this situation and this has been well received by many sectors across society," Wang said. "But our campaign has not come to a stop. This will be a long battle."

"As long as there are people with bad motives who want to spread violent or pornographic information, we will have to continue our campaign to resolutely crack down on the spread of such information."

Of the 4,965 suspects, 1,332 people received "criminal punishment" with 58 jailed for five years or more, Wang said.

The government checked the content of 1.79 million websites and deleted 350 million pornographic and lewd articles, pictures and pieces of video footage, he said.

With an estimated 450 million Internet users as of the end of November, China has a bigger online population than any other country.