BEIJING, Jan. 7 (Xinhua) -- Chinese government authorities deleted about 6.18 million online posts containing pornographic and vulgar content and closed 26,000 illegal websites in 2018, according to official sources Monday.

The authorities investigated and dealt with 12,000 such cases nationwide, according to the National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications.

A major breakthrough was made in cracking down on online streaming services involving vulgar content. In April, police from 24 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities launched a joint raid on an online streaming platform and detained 163 suspects.

Also in April, police in east China's Zhejiang Province busted another online streaming platform, which involved 250 million yuan (36.49 million U.S. dollars) of illegal funds and detained more than 200 suspects.

Stronger actions were made against illegal publications targetting children and online child pornography, the office said.

More than 370,000 items of online child pornography content were deleted and gateway websites removed 1.3 million suspicious links through internal inspection, while 3.4 million copies of illegal publications for child and teenage readers were confiscated, it said.

Chinese citizens actively participated in the campaign with the national tip-off center run by the office receiving more than 130,000 leads in 2018.

The number of investigations based on leads provided by citizen informants increased by 65 percent over that of 2017, the office said.

To encourage more public participation, the government raised the reward for informants to 600,000 yuan from December.