BEIJING - CHINA has expanded a campaign against pornography and 'vulgar' content online, naming more than a dozen websites, including Microsoft's MSN, that it says need to clean up.

The websites contained a large amount of vulgar material that 'violated society's morals, and harmed the health of young people', said a notice posted late on Thursday on the website of the government-backed China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Centre.

MSN was cited for the large amount of inappropriate images on its film channel and some 'selected pictures' in its social messaging section.

Microsoft could not immediately be reached for comment.

Also included in the list is TOM Online's Internet portal. The company has a venture with Internet-based phone provider Skype for the Chinese market.

TOM Online said in a statement on its website on Thursday that it was 'deeply regretful' and posted a number and e-mail address for complaints. 'Regarding this vulgar content, TOM staff have already responded instantly, proactively and thoroughly.'

On Monday, seven government agencies launched a one-month campaign to clean up China's Internet content. The same day, the authorities singled out 19 websites, including Google and China's most popular search engine Baidu, for allegedly carrying vulgar or pornographic content.

Many of the websites have since apologised and pledged to clean up, and Beijing apparently plans to hold them to their promises.

Late on Thursday, it issued a progress update on the set of sites originally targeted. Only three were deemed to have done a 'relatively good' job cleaning up and among those which 'need to continue the cleanup' is Google.

Google had taken initial steps but still had some vulgar pictures on its 'photo search' page, the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Centre said in a report. A Google public relations officer in Beijing had no comment on the report, but said the firm abided by Chinese regulations.

Baidu, a home-grown firm which dominates the domestic search market with about two-thirds of the audience, fared even worse and was listed in a group of companies which had made 'ineffective' clean-up efforts.

'Baidu...has done some cleaning up, but still has a large amount of vulgar content,' the report said.

The company declined immediate comment.

The renewed crackdown on 'vulgar' online content coincides with the government's growing concern over dissent and protest, as the economy slows and China enters a year of sensitive anniversaries - particularly the 20th year since the move on prodemocracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Websites and especially blogs have become magnets for many of the country's nearly 300 million registered Internet users, who seek to read and publish news, views or just raunchy pictures that are off-limits to official media.

But the stability-obsessed government is fighting back with a sophisticated network of controls that can shut off entire websites or just block individual pages within them, and a system to encourage self- censorship by major Internet companies.

A shadowy troop of Internet police also patrols cyberspace, with avatars on many websites offering surfers a direct link to report pornographic, unpatriotic or otherwise offensive content.

The government has not said how many 'cybercops' it fields, but China's official Xinhua news agency reported two years ago that these would monitor all major portals and online forums across the country. Human rights groups say they number in the thousands.

ASSOCIATED PRESS, REUTERS