Notes

Micron Associates - China claims victory in scrubbing internet clean

The Chinese government has declared victory in cleaning up what it considers rumors, negativity and unruliness from online discourse, while critics say the moves have suppressed criticism of the government and ruling Communist Party. Beijing launched the campaign this summer, arresting dozens of people for spreading rumors, creating new penalties for people who post libelous information and calling in the country’s top bloggers for talks urging them to guard the national interest and uphold social order. At the same time, government agencies at all levels have boosted their online presence to control the message in cyberspace.

“If we should describe the online environment in the past as good mingling with the bad, the sky of the cyberspace has cleared up now because we have cracked down on online rumors,” Ren Xianliang, vice minister of the State Internet Information Office, said during a rare meeting this week with foreign journalists. A study by an internet opinion monitoring service under the party-owned People’s Daily newspaper showed the number of posts by a sample of 100 opinion leaders declined by nearly 25 percent and were overtaken by posts from government microblog accounts.

“The positive force on the internet has preliminarily taken back the microphone, and the positive energy has overwhelmed the negative energy to uphold the online justice,” said Zhu Huaxin, the monitoring service’s general secretary, according to a transcript posted by state media.

Source: http://journals.fotki.com/istaceyfreeman/micron-associates/entry/wkrqwwrdtgbdt/