More than a third of all searches for online video on Baidu, China's largest search engine, are for porn and other adult-oriented material, according to company statistics.

Other popular video search subjects include celebrities, TV shows and cartoons.

Baidu reported that 34 per cent of search keywords were 'adult oriented', 14 per cent were for celebrity video, 12 per cent for TV shows, 12 per cent for animation, six per cent for music', and five per cent for movies.

TV show searches were dominated by shows made in Taiwan, with which Beijing has a bitter and long-running dispute over sovereignty.

Eight of the 10 most common animation and cartoon searches were for Japanese-made clips, despite the fact that Japanese aggression during the Second World War still rankles in China.

Baidu formally launched its video search engine at the beginning of 2007, and claims that more than nine out of 10 video searches in China use its service.

Competitor Google Video was knocked into a distant second place, Baidu claims.

Independent market surveys put Baidu's share of the overall China search market at over 60 per cent, compared to less than 30 per cent for Google.

But no independently gathered data on video search behaviour has been published recently.

Baidu also monitored how many times users searched for specific video sharing sites by name.

Tudou.com is China's most in demand site (22 per cent of searches), followed by 56.com (19.9 per cent) and Youku.com (13.9 per cent).