CHINESE artiste Ye Qiantong, who is said to have a lustful voice, has been jailed two years for reading pornographic novels on an online audio books website.

The sentence was suspended with two years of probation and a fine of RMB30,000 ($6,000).

The website Dongting Zhongguo (www.iListen.cn) has been closed down.

The 23-year-old Ye was hired by Dongting Zhongguo - the biggest Chinese audio books site - to read pornographic novels last year.

She was initially paid RMB40 ($8) per hour.

A graduate of Shanghai Conservatory of Music School, she had a big following. She was named "China's number one voice artiste" by netizens.

According to China's Sina website, Shanghai police had cracked down on Dongting Zhongguo following the arrest of four people - Ye, her employer and two company executives in February.

One of the pornographic novels read by Ye.
Recently, Shanghai Xuhui court found the four suspects guilty of producing and distributing 831 pornographic audio files through the audio books website.

Ye's employer was sentenced to 42 months' jail and fined RMB50,000.

One of the executives was sentenced to three years' jail but suspended with three years of probation and RMB50,000 fine.

The other received two-year imprisonment but the sentence was also suspended with the same period of probation and RMB30,000 fine.

Over her 10 months at the website, Ye had recorded numerous popular pornographic audio novels.

Since these programmes were broadcast, Dongting Zhongguo's traffic and profits went up tremendously with over two million visits and 260,000 downloads.

The website charged its listeners for the audio content while paid members were provided with the pornographic audio files.

It had over 20,000 registered users from major cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Zhejiang as well as other countries.