China launches campaign to purge Internet of porn, rumors and, critics say, dissent

China has unfurled a vigorous new campaign to clean up the Internet, to purge it of everything from pornography to “rumors” that might undermine Communist Party rule, a crusade that critics say is a renewed attempt to silence grass-roots voices and stifle dissent.

Censorship of the media and Internet is routine in China, but the new campaign appears to represent a significant tightening of the screws, a bid to bend the Web to the will and values of the Communist Party -- to ensure, in the words of blogger Zhang Jialong, that “party organs, and not the Chinese grass roots, have the loudest voice on the country’s Internet.”

The drive, to “sweep out porn, strike at rumors,” will run from mid-April until November, the party’s news portal Seeking Truth declared that part of the stiffer controls on freedom of expression and the Internet that have been imposed since President Xi Jinping took power in 2013.