China crackdown

China pulls plug on web

CHINA has closed a dozen websites, penalised two popular social media sites and detained six people for circulating rumours of a coup that rattled Beijing in the middle of its worst high-level political crisis in years.

SMH,

31 March, 2012

The extensive crackdown, announced yesterday by state media, underscores the authoritarian government's anxieties over a public that is wired to the internet and eager to discuss political events despite censorship and threats of punishment.

A Xinhua news agency report said Beijing police questioned and admonished an unspecified number of internet users and detained six people, who were not further identified.

Aside from the 16 websites shut down, two Twitter-like services, which are run by Sina Corporation and Tencent Holdings that each have more than 300 million users, said they would disable their comment functions for three days in a ''necessary clean-up''.

The punishments were meted out for fabricating and disseminating rumours that ''military vehicles are entering Beijing, something is going wrong in Beijing'' and similar posts, Xinhua said, citing the State Internet Information Office, an interagency body charged with policing the internet.

Both the coup rumours and the crackdown show how the firing two weeks ago of Bo Xilai, the populist leader of the mega-city of Chongqing, has brought leadership struggles out of the usually closed confines of elite Communist Party politics and into the public arena.

Yet to be fully explained, Mr Bo's dismissal came after a top aide fled temporarily to a US consulate, apparently to seek asylum and in violation of party rules.

It also came as the senior leadership gears up for a handover of power to younger generation leaders in the autumn, always an a period of intense bargaining.

Politically minded Chinese saw the removal of Mr Bo, considered only months ago as a contender for a top job, as a sign of divisive infighting.

''Internet rumours and lies packaged as facts will turn conjecture into reality, stir up trouble online and disturb people's minds,'' the party's flagship newspaper People's Daily said in a commentary accompanying the announcement of the crackdown.

''If allowed to run amok, they will seriously disrupt social order, affect social stability and harm social integrity.''