A crackdown on online videos containing illegal information was launched by China's Internet watchdog on Thursday to further clean up cyberspace.

The crackdown, which will last until the end of the year, will focus mainly on illegal videos on smartphone app stores, cloud services, online forums, micro blogs and instant messaging tool WeChat, the Cyberspace Administration of China said.

"We are paying great attention to videos with content that includes terrorism, rumors and pornography," said Liang Lihua, deputy director of the administration's Internet Information Department.