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Article

16 Sep 2013

Author:
Henry Sanderson & Lulu Yilun Chen, Bloomberg

China Reins in Popular Voices With New Microblog Controls

Chinese microblogger Dong Rubin…was detained [by government]…Dong opposed plans for an oil refinery in…Kunming…a project that spurred street protests…The crackdown on users of…microblogs, along with new punishments for online defamation, reflect a stepped-up Communist Party campaign to rein in a forum that’s challenged China’s censorship regime…China’s top court issued an interpretation…saying Web users could face jail time if defamatory rumors they put online are read by more than 5,000 people or reposted more than 500 times…“So long as Weibo is outing a few bad apples, it’s tolerable,” Andrew Wedeman, a professor of political science at Georgia State University…Popular social media platforms include Sina…Weibo service and Tencent…instant messaging app WeChat…Sina [and] Tencent…didn’t respond to…queries on the rules’ effects…In Kunming earlier this year, Dong investigated the planned oil refinery and published his report online. On Weibo, he called for more transparency about the project…He said the local government has a department that “looks at every Weibo I write.” …[refers to Danwei]