A senior Chinese Government official Wednesday called for domestic companies and industry associations to collaborate in cracking down on irregularities and crime in the country's telecoms and Internet networks.

It will all be part of a wider campaign to "clear" the cyberspace and telecoms networks, according to Xi Guohua, deputy chief of the Ministry of Information Industry (MII).

"Operators and value-added service providers need to run their businesses with a stronger sense of social responsibility," he said at a ceremony marking World Telecommunications Day.

Despite the Internet and telecoms boom, Chinese people are becoming increasingly frustrated with pornography, gambling, spam, and fraud, all spreading on the Internet and mobile phone networks.

Xi said MII's push to "build a healthy network environment" in the past two years have yielded "marked results."

The government has closed several websites with an illegal or unhealthy content.

Li Yue, vice-president of China Mobile, said his company has invested 1.5 billion yuan (US$187 million) in building a billing and supervision system for Monternet, China Mobile's wireless portal.

Loose supervision of the portal enabled pornography and unsolicited SMS' (short messaging service) to hit subscribers in 2004.

Some even fell into "traps," unwittingly subscribing to unwanted wireless services.

China Mobile launched a campaign to crack down on the irregularities, which pushed down the share prices of NASDAQ-listed Chinese Internet portals such as Sina Corp, Sohu.com and NetEase.com.

Such portals had been making a profit from sending out pornographic material to mobile phone users.

Li said complaints against Monternet dropped by 97 per cent in 2005 due to the crackdown.

MII's Xi also urged telecoms operators to improve network and information security.

"The increasing spread of computer viruses and hackers are exposing the country to information insecurity, which poses a serious threat to the interests of the nation, the public and society," he said.

In 2004, a hacker controlled more than 600,000 computers in China to attack a music service website in Beijing for three months.

The website suffered a loss of more than 7 million yuan (US$875,000).

In July 2005, Internet networks in Beijing experienced a large-scale breakdown, affecting the work and lives of people living and working in the capital as they were unable to access the Internet.

That cause of the breakdown has yet to be disclosed.

"We need to put equal stress on the development of networks and security," says Xi, noting the theme of World Telecommunications Day this year is "promoting global cybersecurity."