Chinese police uncover massive underground business specialising in deleting unfavourable online posts
Businesses and corruption suspects pay millions to erase their tracks from cyberspace
PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 20 May, 2015, 3:32pm
UPDATED : Wednesday, 20 May, 2015, 3:57pm
Mandy Zuo
[email protected]
Middlemen and go-betweens bribe internet editors and technicians to remove embarrassing online comments about their clients. Photo: Reuters
Police in Hubei have uncovered the biggest case in China so far involving paid services for the removal of unfavourable online posts.
The operation was worth an estimated 50 million yuan (HK$63 million) and involved about 2,000 people in 22 provinces and municipalities, state media reported.
Such operations are not uncommon in the mainland. In December, 2013, police shut down six “public relations” firms who charged their clients to have posts removed. The companies had bribed website editors technicians, through agents, to delete the posts. The companies charged clients hundreds of thousands of yuan to delete the posts, and paid agents between 200-1,000 per deleted post.
In the latest case in Hubei, police found that negative information about officials, large corporations and listed companies, and celebrities are the major clients of the business in Quichun county, part of an industry that one suspect claimed made an annual profit of 100 million yuan nationwide and had created tens of thousands of jobs.
In a detailed report issued on Wednesday, Xinhua revealed that college students, teachers, online editors, civil servants and police officers were paid to delete posts.
Police detained 10 main suspects and were pursuing five others after receiving a tip-off from a member of the public in November.
A 26-year-old man, identified by his surname Yu, allegedly headed the group. It is believed he made more than 7.8 million yuan since 2011.
Another unnamed suspect told Xinhua that the price for a post on a small website usually cost from 100 to 1,000 yuan, while one on a famous website would usually cost 2,000 to 4,000 yuan.
Deleting posts on large national websites could cost up to 10,000 yuan, he was quoted as saying.
“Sometimes we need to go through several, or even a dozen, middlemen to find the administrator who could delete the post,” he said. “Every time the request changed hands, the price went up by 200 to 300 yuan as a commission.”
The most frequently removed posts were those that exposed corrupt officials. Police found in one suspect’s computer that a party chief of an unnamed county in Shanxi province had 52 posts related to him removed in 2013, for a cost of more than 38,000 yuan.
Many industry insiders helped delete online criticism of Yang Dacai, the former work safety chief of Shaanxi province who outraged internet users after online posts revealed his expensive watches in 2013, a suspect surnamed Li said. Yang, widely known as “watch brother”, was later sentenced to 14 years in jail for corruption.
“Particularly after the 18th Party Congress, when there was a surge of online tip-offs [about corrupted officials], we had such good business that we usually had to work till midnight,” Li said.
Publicly-listed companies became the biggest source of income ahead of the annual Consumer Rights Day in March, when authorities launched crackdowns on problematic goods and services.
The posts most often requested to be deleted related to pollution, food safety, housing and health care, police said.
China’s Supreme Court 2013 deemed that paid post removal services were illegal. But legal experts said there have yet to be explicit rules covering liabilities of the client, the implementer, and the agent. As a result, some along the chain of command have escaped punishment.
