Beijing: China has removed 2.10 lakh online posts and shut down 42 websites as part of a massive crackdown on the country's 300 million-strong microbloggers following coup rumours as a major political scandal rocked the nation.
An announcement to this effect in state-run media on Thursday comes close on the heels of the nation's biggest political crisis after a top leader was sacked from the Communist Party and his wife detained on suspicion of murder.
"Actions of creating and spreading rumours via the Internet disrupt public order and undermine social stability, and will never be tolerated," Liu Zhengrong, a senior official with the State Internet Information Office (SIIO), said.
Such behaviour will be handled seriously and rumour mongers held accountable in accordance with the law, he said, according to state-run Xinhua news agency.
To stop rumours from being disseminated via microblogging service websites, Liu said both government agencies and the internet service providers should play an appropriate role, while Internet users themselves should remain vigilant against rumours and report them to the authorities in a timely manner.
The crackdown intensified since last month after rumours floated on the microblog media about an impending coup with post-dated pictures of army tanks moving on the streets of Beijing speculating a factional fighting with the ruling Communist Party.
Following this, two major Chinese microblogging sites, weibo.com and t.qq.com, known as Chinese Twitters with about 300 million microbloggers subscribers, suspended comment functions from March 31 to April 3 as punishment.
Also they have been told to increase supervision of the content and initiate legal proceedings against the rumour- mongers.
The speculation went viral with the rumours of infighting in the party leadership following action against Bo Xilai, a hardline leader who became famous with his crackdown on mafia in Chongqing city. He was sacked from the party two days ago for indiscipline, and his wife and an orderly held for alleged role in murder of a British national.
References to his name on the microblogs were reportedly blocked by firewalls.
Last week, Chinese officials closed 16 websites and detained six people responsible for "fabricating or disseminating online rumours."
Also Beijing police arrested 1,065 suspects and deleted more than 208,000 "harmful" online messages as part of an intensive nationwide crackdown on Internet-related crimes conducted since mid-February.
This is perhaps for the first time the Chinese government, which was apprehensive about the emergence of the alternate media, cracked down on them, though a series of measures to regulate them were announced in the recent months.
The measures included mandatory registration of the real identity of the users.
As China spearheaded the mobile revolution with subscribers' number crossing over a billion recently, the microblogs have emerged as the enduring symbol of Chinese people's aspirations for opening up on the information front.
The number of Internet users in China is estimated to have reached 513 million last year.
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