China's Ministry of Health has moved to stop sex health websites being used as an excuse for publishing porn.

"The ministry will strengthen its management and supervision of sex health websites in the country to guarantee scientific and accurate information and prevent lewd content in disguise," Deng Haihua, head of the ministry's information office told Xinhua here Wednesday.

Websites have to attribute sources using watermarks or text for any visual and textual sexual health content, according to the Measures for Control over Health care Information on the Internet released Tuesday by the Ministry of Health.

The measures, which will take effect after July 1, specify that healthcare websites cannot pick up content from illegal publications and must take full responsibility for their content, including information linked to from their sites.

Fines of up to 30,000 yuan (4,412 U.S. dollars) can be levied for distributing obscene content under the guise of conducting sex research.

In addition, only legal healthcare organizations can apply to provincial-level government's health administration and management departments to set up health-themed websites, said the measures.

However, general websites are not allowed to set up a sex section while sexology-themed sites must limit the access to specialists working in that field.

China began a high-profile crackdown on Internet porn in January, targeting popular online portals and major search engines such as Google and Baidu.

(Xinhua News Agency June 24, 2009)