NANCHANG, April 26 (Xinhua) -- Chinese police have nabbed a pirate DVD production and sales ring that had concealed their operation in a supposed bird flu research base in east China's Jiangxi Province.

Zheng Deming, head of the provincial anti-pornography and anti-illegal publications office, said police in Jiangxi, Hubei and Guangzhou seized at least 16 alleged members of a fake DVD ring which has produced and sold about 26.4 million DVDs in two years.

Zheng said they received reports from local residents last April that a large number of fake DVDs were being transported by air from Nanchang, capital of Jiangxi, to other cities in the country.

They discovered that the DVDs were produced in a factory in Liantang Township in Nanchang County, Zheng said.

Zheng said local police spent months on monitoring the factory before raiding it last November and seizing about 100,000 pirated DVDs and four production lines. Eleven suspects, including the boss of the factory, surnamed Feng, were detained.

Another 100,000 illegal DVDs and five suspects were later seized in a storage area in neighboring Hubei Province.

Investigation shows that Feng moved the factory from Guangdong to Jiangxi in June 2004, when police in south China intensified their hunt for fake publications, Zheng said.

He let word get around that his factory was a research base for bird flu, and managed to keep local residents away, Zheng said.

Feng kept the factory locked, and did not allow workers to come out during the day, Zheng said.

Zhang Wu, director of the criminal investigation team of the Jiangxi airport police brigade, said most of the fake DVDs were sold in big cities such as Guangzhou and Beijing, and sales volume reached more than 30 million (about 3.8 million U.S. dollars) yuan in two years.

"Like Feng, many DVD production factories are moving from big cities, where the market is, to rural inland towns, where they hope to escape detection," Zhang said.

Zhang said the suspects face criminal charges and heavy fines.

China is determined to crack down on illegal publications and protect intellectual rights.