HONG KONG – China has arrested over 30,000 people in connection with the spread of pornography and online gambling, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

According to the agency a recent effort in the populous southern Guangdong region saw over 3,000 arrests and 8,000 people put in criminal detention.

Earlier this month Xinhua said that 11 Internet firms including Tencent and Baidu would be fined for spreading pornography and violence. The scale of the fines was not revealed. In May this year Sina.com was fined RMB5.1 million ($831,000) for “unhealthy and indecent content.”

The arrests and fines are part of a campaign to clean up the Internet that began in April and intensified over the last two months. The move is paralleled by a crackdown on freedom of expression since Xi Jinping became president in 2012.