China’s communist leaders, in a fresh move to eradicate pornography, have targeted the telephone sex industry, ordering severe punishment for anyone offering the service, the official People’s Daily said yesterday.

The call came within days of the start of a nationwide project to crack down on Internet pornography. “With the rapid development of the paid-call service market in China, some lawbreakers make use of this form to spread obscene information and even conduct prostitution,” Minister of Information Industry Wang Xudong was quoted as saying.

“This depraves social morals, and especially brings great harm to the country’s young minds,” said Wang, quoted by the Xinhua news agency.

The crackdown, which began in July, involves police, propaganda departments and information watchdogs, must be completed by October 1, China’s National Day, Wang said. Regional governments were ordered to shut down telephone sex operators and to punish severely those responsible, he said.

In the drive to clean up the Internet, police have closed down more than 700 pornographic websites so far and arrested 329 suspects.

China’s communist rulers have gradually relaxed the puritanical rule they imposed when they swept to power in 1949, but sporadically try to crack down on the sex industry and are particularly nervous about pornography on the Internet.