An influential Communist party journal has compared online rumours to Cultural Revolution-style denunciations and warned of the need to curb "wanton defamation" of authority, as China intensifies its campaign to control social media.
It came as the Chinese state broadcaster aired video of handcuffed businessman Xue Manzi, also known as Charles Xue, confessing he had irresponsibly spread rumours because his 12 million microblog followers made him feel like an "emperor".
While China has repeatedly attempted to rein in the country's boisterous social media, a leading internet activist described the wide-ranging crackdown on dissent as unprecedented.
"In their eyes, the internet is out of control now and it has become a tool to reduce their political base, and subvert the ideology of the government. This campaign includes the crackdown on 'big Vs' [verified microblog users with many followers] and inner rectification [of the Communist party]. It is a brutal and astute plan At present, people do not talk," added Wen Yunchao.
Others have raised concerns about increased pressure on academia and the detention of activists including legal scholar Xu Zhiyong.
The Communist party's top theoretical journal Qiushi, or Seeking Truth warned that some were using internet freedoms "to engage in wanton defamation, attacking the party and the government The internet is full of all kinds of negative news and critical voices saying the government only does bad things and everything it says is wrong."
It compared online rumours to "big character posters", the handwritten denunciations of people and institutions mostly associated with the Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966. The appearance of the posters was often the prelude to more vicious persecution.
Websites and social media have become an essential forum for discussion and the spread of information, despite censorship, because the restrictions on other media are still stricter.
But authorities have signalled they are stepping up controls and targeting popular users by issuing a judicial decision that internet users could face three years in jail if they share rumours that are viewed more than 5,000 times or forwarded more than 500 times.
Chen Ziming, an independent Beijing-based scholar, said that normally in China one spoke of "killing chickens to scare the monkeys" sending a warning to people by punishing lowlier folk.
"This time they have killed a few monkeys, such as Xue Manzi, to try to terrify the chickens," he said.
Police arrested Xue last month for soliciting prostitutes for group sex, but supporters believed it was retaliation for his outspokenness.
On Saturday, the English-language edition of the state-run Global Times newspaper accused critics of seeking to portray any liberals who faced court as victims of "political persecution", adding: "Even the prostitution scandal of Chinese-American investor Charles Xue has been seen by them as an 'official crackdown on freedom of speech'."
Only one day later Xue appeared of his own volition, news anchors announced on a major news bulletin, to talk about online responsibility. He told viewers: "Freedom of speech cannot override the law".
The news programme cut between pictures of the venture capitalist in happier times, beaming from a magazine cover, and the image of him in handcuffs and a green detainee's uniform, with a scruffy beard and unkempt hair.
Last week, another prominent businessman known for his bold online comments property tycoon Pan Shiyi appeared on television news to stress that internet users should be socially responsible. Viewers were as struck by the normally fluent entrepreneur's marked stutter as his remarks and he subsequently commented on his nervousness about the interview.
Zhang Lifan, a well-known historian, predicted that controls, while effective in the short term, risked backfiring as authorities lost touch with public opinion.
"If someone is speaking, a certain security remains; if everyone remains silent, then when the volcano erupts, no one can control it. This is what the rulers don't understand. They force the critics to be opponents," he said.
Wu Qiang, a political scientist at Tsinghua University, said the tightening of controls on civil society began before Xi Jinping became leader, under Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao.
But he added: "The government has a strong sense of insecurity because they see Xu Zhiyong and Wang Gongquan, mild dissidents, as the growth of political opposition. Also, the internal political struggles didn't stop after the handover [of power to new leaders], but are developing The third plenum is coming, and they need to avoid letting anything affect the internal struggles."
The event carries symbolic weight because Deng Xiaoping used a third plenum in 1978 to establish his vision of economic reform and opening.
Chinese Communist party intensifies online crackdown | World news | theguardian.com
