BEIJING, July 3 (Xinhuanet) -- In a recent move to expand its censorship controls over wireless technologies and Internet contents, China has issued a set of guidelines on filtering out pornographic, fraudulent and illicit mobile phone short text messages.

    The new rules provide the framework for China Mobile Corp, the country's No. 1 provider of cellphone services, to contract out the policing and filtering of short messages deemed to contain unhealthy or fraudulent centents.

    So far 10 such companies have started the policing work in 20 categories of content that are listed in an earlier agreement reached between the government and Internet Service Providers, the China Daily Online said in a report Saturday.

    In 2003, over 220 billion text messages were sent in China, accounting for some 55 percent of the world's total, the report said. Enditem