BEIJING, Jan 23, 2008 (AFP) - Chinese authorities shut down 44,000 websites and arrested 868 people last year in a campaign against pornography that is set to continue to the Beijing Olympics in August, state media said Wednesday.

Another 1,911 people have received unspecified "penalties", the Xinhua news agency said, citing a statement from a Communist Party meeting.

It said the campaign would continue until September.

Pornography is illegal in China and the government takes great efforts to ban offending sites, but cyber-sex websites remain widely available.

China had 210 million Internet users by the end of 2007 -- second only to the United States -- and will soon take the number one slot, according to an official report last week.