Chinese mobile phone users were hit by over 300 billion spam SMS messages in 2013. This mammoth number of spam texts remains a persistent problem in China, which is the world's largest mobile phone market.

The daily newspaper, People's Daily, said advertising and sales promotions gimmicks accounted for 80 percent of this total, sales promotions took 65 percent, while real estate advertisements made up 15 percent. Mobile users in Beijing received an average of 2.2 spam messages everyday last year.

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A government campaign against spam in November and December in 2013 was said to have cut spam messages by over 50 percent.

Government sources said spam messages are sent via fake base stations. These unlicensed telecommunication facilities enable cyber-criminals to spam mobile users. Among the favorite spam methods are the use of fake phone numbers disguised as communications from government banks or telecoms operators.

The government is pushing ahead with its campaign to close down these base stations. Last March, the Ministry of Public Security arrested 1,530 people allegedly involved in using fake telecommunication base stations to send spam text messages to millions of mobile phones.

Started in February, the campaign has resulted in the confiscation of more than 2,600 fake base stations and the identification of 3,540 suspected criminal acts.

One of the criminal groups in the northeastern province of Liaoning is suspected of sending more than 200 million spam messages. The spam messages include phishing attempts to access bank accounts; suspicious real estate offers and pornography, among others.

China's three major telecom carriers are also involved in the fight against spam text messages, but the results have been spotty. China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom in 2009 imposed limits on text messaging to put a boundary on spam SMS. Under their restrictions, a mobile phone number can send no more than 200 messages per hour and 1,000 per day on weekdays.