China Took Offline Sixteen Websites, Arrested People

Last week, the Chinese authorities have arrested 6 people and took offline sixteen sites on the weird charge of “spreading rumors of unusual military vehicle movements” in the capital of the country.




It is known to everyone, especially to the industry experts, that China is quite an interesting country from this point of view. Although the United States are sometimes also doing very strange things in the copyright field, China seems to be much stranger. In this particular case, the “unusual vehicle movements” might have been a hand-brake turn with a couple of doughnuts in Tiananmen Square that wouldn’t have been so much unusual as “wicked”.

Anyway, the reason why the Chinese authorities didn’t like the reporting of the unusual movement of their military so much was the political failure of one of the ruling Communist Party’s senior leaders.

Indeed, two weeks ago, Bo Xilai was removed as party chief of the inland city of Chongqing. This was a result of a scandal involving a senior aide. Of course, the world and its dog did expect that he might not go quietly. After Xilai was sacked, the most popular microblogs were awash with rumors about a government coup and soaping under the armpits of speculation.

As a result, Sina and Tencent have shut the comment functions on their microblogging websites for the next couple days in order to “clean up rumors and other unauthorized information spreading”. As you can see, it was no surprise for the industry observers, then, that there were people arrested and online services taken offline.