According to a new study, the number of Chinese websites fell significantly last year as more and a million sites were taken offline due to non-compliance with the country’s strict internet laws.

China had about .91 million websites at the end of 2010, which is about 41 percent less than a year earlier, according to a report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). The CASS, which is a government think-thank, said that the decline is due to an economic downturn and campaigns to root out internet pornography and spam.

However, analysts say that the drop is due to heavy handed approach of the Chinese authorities on the internet. Chinese authorities block human rights website, social networking sites including Facebook, YouTube etc and place censors on online services.

"China has a very high level of freedom of online speech. There have been very few cases where websites were shut down in recent years purely to control speech," said CASS researcher Liu Ruisheng.