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"They don't love literature. They take shortcuts by writing porn just to earn money," he says.

Obscene literature sometimes gets 100 million clicks very quickly, he says.

With an overall annual income of 4 billion yuan, online literature has become a big business in a little more than a decade of development, the CNNIC report says.

Wide usage of smartphones and portable e-readers has spurred the boom, says an official surnamed Wang with the information section of the National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications.

Wang adds that the office has strengthened its attacks against porn in cyberspace since 2009.

Most of the major online literature websites are able to apply a series of mechanisms to check pornographic and illegal content, "which is the basis and premise of our job", says Wu Wenhui, CEO of Tencent Literature.

The office launched an anti-porn movement called "Cleaning the Web 2014" from April to November to weed out the illegal content and keep them away from the reach of children, Wang says.

The Chinese-language Internet portal Sina.com was fined for having 20 books of lewd and pornographic online literature, which earned them 500,000 yuan of illegal income, the office announced.

Jin Haixing, Zou Ren and Wang Qiang contributed to this story.