Wall Street Journal
HONG KONG — Aggressive Chinese bloggers make an art of challenging Chinese government propaganda. This week, they can claim a victory. On Friday, Chinese authorities announced that four Communist Party, local government and security officials in Guizhou province’s Weng’an county were sacked for “severe malfeasance” over the alleged coverup of a murder, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.
That change in stance appears to be a direct result of pressure brought by journalists and Chinese bloggers such as Zhou Shuguang, a self-styled “personal news station,” who didn’t allow the issue to drop, posting to the Internet unofficial reports along with photos and pleas from the family of the dead youth. When mainstream Chinese Web sites began deleting posts on the issue, some bloggers turned to technical workarounds, including writing their posts backwards and reposting material that had been taken down elsewhere.
Exposed to online postings that sprout up and multiply before they can be censored, the public has come to expect more transparency and responsiveness from the government. China is home to 223 million Internet users, according to official statistics, nearly as many as the U.S. More
Also See: Chinese riot over police ‘cover-up’