BEIJING â€" One of China’s largest hosts of Twitter-like microblogs decreed new punishments on Monday for users who post comments that its editors â€" and by extension, China’s government censors â€" deem inappropriate.
The service, Sina Weibo, imposed “user contracts†that award each of its 300 million microbloggers a starting score of 80 points, from which points can be deducted for online comments that are judged offensive.
When a blogger reaches zero, the service stated, a user’s account will be canceled, but users who suffer lesser penalties can restore their 80 points by avoiding violations for two months.
Points will be deducted for a wide range of violations, including spreading rumors, calling for protests, promoting cults or superstitions and impugning China’s honor, the service stated.
Most notably, the contract also will punish time-honored tactics that bloggers use to avoid censorship, like disguising comments on censored topics by using homonyms (where two different Chinese characters have nearly identical sounds), puns and other dodges.
To evade censors, for example, bloggers have referred to the dissident artist Ai Weiwei by using Chinese characters for “love the future,†a rough homonym for his name. Such ploys would be punished with a loss of points under the new rules.
The restrictions on comments are not new by themselves. Throngs of government censors already control what appears on the Internet, and corporate minders at Sina Weibo and other sites have long complied with their orders, deleting offensive comments, sly homonyms and other posts that rile government sensibilities.
The point system, however, appears to be a muted effort to extend that control by warning users when they approach the boundaries of official tolerance. Internet companies like Sina, which are privately operated, tread a thin line between too-lax censorship that might draw government punishment and overly strict rules that would quash the lively debates that make the services popular.
The new rules were announced in early May and took effect on Monday.
Chinese propaganda authorities have progressively clamped down on the freedoms of Internet users since last year, when a high-speed train wreck in Zhejiang Province unleashed an online flood of angry anti-government comments.
Censors have all but shut down comments this spring on embarrassing incidents involving Bo Xilai, the Politburo member suspended over a murder investigation involving financial dealings with a British businessman, and Chen Guangcheng, an internationally known dissident who sought refuge last month in the United States Embassy in Beijing.
The government briefly banned users from commenting on microblog posts on Sina Weibo and a rival service, Tencent QQ, apparently as a warning against spreading rumors about government instability surrounding Mr. Bo’s troubles.
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