China Clamps Down on Web News Discussion

The new rules ban independent reporting that hasn't been approved by the government, discussion of sensitive issues such as economic failures, and Web postings that challenge the Communist Party.

Officials at the Information Office of the State Council, which regulates online media, were not immediately available for comment.

But according to documents made available to The Times, Information Office gatekeepers outlined the strict guidelines to senior managers from China's largest Internet portals in a meeting this week.

"The reason why they did this is very obvious," said Li Fang, chief editor of Netease Review. "The Communist Party thinks the Internet news comments are putting them under too much pressure from public opinion."

Although the government has gone after individual columns and news discussion sites in the past, insiders say this is the first time it has adopted such a systematic approach to the genre.

People who work in this area said they were afraid of getting fired, or persecuted politically, as a result of the new campaign.

The action comes as Beijing prepares to host the annual National People's Congress meeting next week. China tends to tighten control over the media in advance of major meetings, party congresses and leadership changes.

Internet employees say this year's meeting is not particularly important, however, and suspect that the real reason lies elsewhere. They believe that senior party officials have been rattled by the medium's ability to shape public opinion and air citizen outrage, citing the recent "BMW case."

In December, a court in remote Heilongjiang province handed down a suspended sentence to a woman for what many saw as murder. A farmer and his wife reportedly scratched the woman's BMW with their cart, at which point the woman got out, yelled at a group of peasants, then got back behind the wheel and plowed into the crowd, killing a woman and injuring 12 other people. There were reports that the driver was politically well-connected.