A spokesperson for China's State Council said the country's laws protect freedom of speech online but also forbid use of the Internet for acts such as subverting the government, destroying national unity or spreading porn or violent content, according to a separate Xinhua report.

"China's handling of this harmful information according to the law has a full legal basis, and without a doubt is a totally separate issue from so-called 'restrictions on Internet freedom,' " the official was quoted as saying. "We will steadfastly walk the path of Internet development and oversight with Chinese characteristics."

China's foreign ministry last week by urging Internet freedom in countries including China.

China requires the local search engines of Google and other companies to remove certain sensitive items from search results, including porn and political content such as information about the 1989 democracy protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Local authorities also patrol the Web for such content and sometimes punish Internet companies that allow it to appear on their sites, including on user-generated pages such as blogs.

Google is still censoring search results on its Chinese search engine, but company CEO that could change soon.