BEIJING -- Chinese government has closed 274 illegal websites containing pornographic and violent contents since mid July, said the State Internet Information Office here Tuesday.

The authorities also fined more than 300 websites for illegal operations, said a statement from the office.

Several government agencies jointly launched the campaign in mid July to reduce children's access to potentially harmful information during the summer vacation, the statement said.

A large number of the websites were not registered or registered with false information while a few of them disguised themselves through stealing domain names and servers of some deserted websites, the statement said.

Besides spreading pornography and violence, some websites were also caught spreading false medical information.