Computer crimes in China have been increasing in recent years, said a white paper titled "The Internet in China" issued on Tuesday.

The white paper, issued by the Information Office of the State Council,said the tendency of the combination of various traditional crimes and computer crimes has become gradually more obvious.

"Online fraud, online theft and other forms of crimes which encroach on the property of others are increasing rapidly," said the paper. "Crimes such as producing and spreading computer viruses, and computer and network hacking are increasing."

"Criminal activities such as disseminating obscenity, pornography and gambling are still pressing problems," the paper added.

According to the paper, public security departments dealt with 142 computer crime cases in 1998, 29,000 in 2007, 35,000 in 2008 and 48,000 in 2009.

In order to effectively combat computer crimes, the Chinese laws stipulate that criminal activities conducted by making use of the Internet or against the Internet shall be investigated and dealt with in accordance with the Criminal Law or other relevant laws.

"China is one of the countries suffering most from hacking, " said the paper.

According to incomplete statistics, more than 1 million IP addresses in China were controlled from overseas in 2009, 42,000 websites were distorted by hackers, and 18 million Chinese computers were infected by the Conficker virus every month, about 30 percent of the computers infected globally, said the paper.

"Chinese laws prohibit all forms of hacking," said the paper, adding that concerns about Internet security of different countries should be fully respected.