Shanghai becomes latest Chinese city to crack down on social media

Instead, many of China's 457 million internet users post messages about and debate socio-political issues on Weibo, China's version of Twitter.

Such platforms are viewed by the Beijing leadership as a direct threat to its rule, and are thus heavily policed and censored.

The boom in their use has seen a perpetual game of cat and mouse between internet users and the army of so-called net nannies, who shut down and censor sensitive issues and search names as quickly as they appear.

Chinese net users use satirical humour to describe censorship, declaring a blacklisted issue or person as being "harmonised", a direct mocking reference to President Hu Jintao's flagship policy to build "a harmonious society."

Millions also get around the government's notorious firewall by using VPN's ? virtual private networks ? which allows access to popular international sites such as Facebook.

Source: http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/564430/s/1b470b48/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Cnews0Cworldnews0Casia0Cchina0C89780A370CShanghai0Ebecomes0Elatest0EChinese0Ecity0Eto0Ecrack0Edown0Eon0Esocial0Emedia0Bhtml/story01.htm

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