China is declaring progress in the war on online rumor and slander:
China's campaign against online rumors, which critics say is crushing free speech, has been highly successful in "cleaning" the Internet, a top official of the country's internet regulator said on Thursday.
China has the world's most sophisticated online censorship system, known outside the country as the Great Firewall. It blocks many social media websites, such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and others, along with many sites hosted in Taiwan and those of rights groups and some foreign media agencies.
Rumor and slander are major parts of our free media world. We call it "news." That's the price we pay (and should pay) for freedom of speech.
Of course, success is not defined by profit. Defense of party rule is the only coin of that realm. Rumor and slander obviously threaten that rule.
And with the Internet, China doesn't want "mass incidents" to be more focused on urban issues where their
