Beijing will recruit an army of tens of thousands of volunteers by the end of this year to help strip "lewd" content off the Internet, the Capital Civic Enhancement Committee Office (CCECO) said on Friday.

All volunteers would be registered with their real names and would be under the command of CCECO and the Beijing Internet Management Office, a local Internet regulator, said a CCECO director surnamed Zhou who is in charge of works concerning minors.

The volunteers would be asked to report to the authorities should they come across any "lewd" content, or find Internet users exhibiting "uncivilized behavior" when surfing on the Internet.

"Lewd" content includes violence, libel, private and other information that violates standards of public decency.

"The aim is to shield the minors from unwanted harm they might be subjected to on the Internet," Zhou said.

Authorities are also recruiting supervision volunteers in cyber bars to help prevent the spread of "lewd" and pornographic content, and stop minors from entering the cyber bars.

An unnamed employee with the Beijing Internet Management Office confirmed on Friday that it "had a plan to recruit some Internet supervision volunteers," but refused to verify or provide further details.

The movement came as the latest in a string of China's drives to crack down on pornographic and lewd content on the Internet.

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

On Thursday, 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.

Google China insisted a formal statement must be made by its publicity department, phone calls to which reached only an answering machine Friday afternoon.

(Xinhua News Agency June 19, 2009)