China's culture law enforcers confiscated more than 16 million pieces of illegal publications and investigated about 2,400 cases of infringement on intellectual property rights during the third quarter of this year, the Ministry of Culture said Thursday.

Meanwhile, nine Chinese companies were fined for illegally providing online games and three of them were deprived of profits they obtained from the illegal deeds, the ministry said in a statement.

Law enforcers affiliated to the country's culture departments at various levels launched frequent investigations during the July-September period in order to clean up the culture markets.

A total of 12.41 million pieces of audio and video products and 3.88 million illegal books, newspapers and magazines were seized during the campaigns, the statement said.

Officials with the ministry could not be reached immediately to explain exactly why these publications were regarded as illegal.

In China, illegal publications are usually involved in either unlawful and unethical contents such as pornography, or illegal publishing practices, for example, a book that is published before obtaining official approval.

Fines imposed on businesses involved in the illegal publishing cases reached 53.62 million yuan (7.8 million U.S. dollars), and 1.33 million yuan earned from those unlawful operations was confiscated.

Law enforcement departments also investigated 2,386 cases of infringement on intellectual property rights, in which 1,780 firms involved were ordered to suspend business, and licenses of 413 companies were revoked.

A total of 263 people implicated in the cases have been prosecuted.

The ministry also said nine companies in the cities of Beijing and Shanghai, and provinces of Sichuan, Shaanxi, Anhui and Guangdong were fined because they provided online games without authorization.

The companies were ordered to separately pay fines ranging from 1,500 yuan (220 U.S. dollars) to 100,000 yuan (14,645 dollars).

Three of them were also deprived of illegal profits totaling 162,630 yuan.

In the drive to crack down on illegal Internet cafes and electronic game lounges, 11,000 pieces of facilities such as computers and 19,000 electronic game machines were confiscated, according to the ministry.

(Xinhua News Agency November 28, 2008)