One of 40 fake Terracotta Warriors is smashed in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, on Wednesday night.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Several platoons of fake Terracotta Warriors were smashed to bits in Xi'an early on Thursday after the city launched a crackdown on misleading museums and tricky tour guides.

Officials from the Shaanxi provincial capital's public security, tourism and commerce bureaus destroyed 40 copycat statues at the Suyuan Qin Terracotta Army, a privately owned attraction, after complaints of scams targeting tourists.

Xi'an is home to the world-famous Qin Shihuang Terracotta Warriors and Horses Museum, which has thousands of life-size statues of soldiers, horses and carriages dating back to the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC).

Authorities were alerted after a visitor from Wuhan, Hubei province, posted on WeChat this month about being cheated in late 2016 by a fake police officer, fake taxi driver and fake tour guide, who took him to an attraction posing as a Terracotta Warriors museum.

After seeing the complaint, the city's Party secretary, Wang Yongkang, ordered officials in Lintong district, which houses the real museum, to investigate and clean up the tourism market.

"The Terracotta Warriors and Horses are one of the world's wonders and attract millions of domestic and foreign tourists every year, "he said.

The statues were unearthed in 1974 about a kilometer from the Mausoleum of Qin Shihuang, resting place of the first emperor of a unified China. They quickly became one of the nation's hottest tourism destinations.