China’s most popular search engine Baidu.com has been censured by the Chinese government for spreading pornographic images of celebrities.

Photos showing Hong Kong actor Edison Chen and other female stars naked were indexed and made available by the search engine.

The Beijing Association of Online Media said," While other Beijing Internet companies have boycotted the spread of the racy photos, Baidu still hasn’t implemented effective blocking and obscuring of the photos and has become defensive and procrastinated, leading to the stagnation of a large amount of pornographic, filthy pictures."

The association also asked Baidu to make a public apology for spreading the sexually explicit photos.

"’Key-words searching’ and ‘Tieba’, a picture-sharing section of Baidu.com became a platform to show and spread the obscene pictures and Baidu failed to block the photos after other Beijing-based websites had taken actions against the pictures’ spreading," the watchdog group said.

The group was supportive of other Chinese Web sites, including Sohu.com, Sina.com and Netease, for requesting Internet users "not to download, save and spread photos" and "to prevent the photos from falling into the hands of children."