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Communist official orders closer monitoring of Chinese micro-blogging site


 Chinese Government official has told the operators of the country's equivalent to Twitter to place closer controls on the spread of information, according to media reports.

Liu Qi, a Communist Party secretary, told officials from the sina.com website to "resolutely put an end to fake and misleading information", according to a report in the New York Times (NYT). Approximately 200 million users are thought to use Weibo, a micro-blogging service, through sina.com.

Qi also told Weibo officials to "strengthen management and firmly prevent the spread of fake and harmful information", according to a report by the Huffington Post.

Qi visited the sina officials on Monday last week, according to the NYT report. Weibo operators sent out a message to each of its users on Friday telling them that the service was suspending the accounts of several bloggers deemed to have spread unfounded gossip, the report said.

Some Weibo users expressed outrage at the measures, according to the NYT.

“How does Weibo know what’s true or not? Who gives Weibo the right to silence its users?", one user wrote, according to the report.

The Chinese Government has strict rules governing websites. Google has previously complained about having to filter search results, such as 'Free Tibet', on its Chinese domain. Facebook and Twitter is banned in the country.

Western Governments have regularly criticised the Chinese approach to website control. Last year US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that censorship "should not be in any way accepted by any company anywhere."

Earlier this year an anonymous online post called for the Chinese public to protest in a 'Jasmine Revolution' against the Chinese Government's censorship on the internet.

The Chinese Government has previously spoken out against foreign condemnation of the country's internet laws, with one official labelling the criticisms as a "groundless smear".

In May the Chinese Government set up the State Internet Information Office to manage internet information. The Government said the Office would be "assigned duties to investigate and punish websites violating laws and regulations".

"Although China's internet sector has witnessed rapid growth since the mid-1990s, some problems, such as online porn and vulgar content, online gambling and fraud as well as illegal online marketing tricks, have been hampering its sound development. Improved regulation measures are needed to deal with these problems, and the setting up of the new office is part of the country's efforts to promote the healthy development of the Internet," the Chinese Government said at the time.

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