Chinese authorities confiscated 20.53 million illegal publications amid stepped up efforts to clean up the cultural environment and safeguard cultural security, the national anti-illegal publication office said on Thursday.

The number represents a significant year-on-year decrease since 2011, according to a statement from the National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications, adding that 52 million and 45 million such publications were seized by authorities in 2011 and 2012, respectively.

Among the seized are 670,000 pornographic publications, marking a 30-percent drop compared with the figure in 2012, the statement said.

Authorities also solved 10,000 such cases, including seven copyright infringement cases with each involving money up to 10 million yuan, according to the statement.

In addition, more than 10,000 websites were shut down in 2013.

In September 2013, a man called Yang Junlin was sentenced to ten years in prison for pretending to be a journalist and illegally obtaining 502,000 yuan ($82,980.6) in north China's Shanxi Province.

(Xinhua News Agency January 2, 2014)