China Escalates Crackdown On Internet Amid Scandal

China has stepped up its campaign to clamp down on the Internet, which has emerged as a virtual town square for exchanging information about the Bo Xilai scandal and the nation's biggest political upheaval in years.

The popular Twitter-like microblogging service Sina Weibo deleted the accounts of several users, including that of Li Delin, a senior editor of the Chinese business magazine Capital Week, whose March 19 post helped fuel rumors of a coup in Beijing. The service announced the move to many of its more than 300 million user accounts, thereby turning it into a public lesson in the consequences of rumor mongering. "Recently, criminal elements have used Sina Weibo to create and spread malicious political rumors online for no reason, producing a terrible effect on society," the notice said. It said the deleted users have "already been dealt with by public security organs according to the law." The episode demonstrated both the power of China's new digital media and the Chinese Communist Party's increasingly iron-fisted effort to control it. In the wake of the coup rumors, authorities announced the detention of six people in relation to the rumors and the arrest of more than 1,000 others for what the authorities said were Internet crimes. Media insiders describe a heavy hand at the nation's newspapers, with the government at times giving strict instructions on what stories about Mr. Bo could run. Discussion of the matter nonetheless has continued, fueled in part by social media and independent news websites outside of Beijing's control.