China has formed a special force of undercover online commentators to try to sway public opinion on controversial issues on the Internet, a newspaper said on Thursday…
A special force of online commentators had already been operating in Suqian city in the eastern coastal province of Jiangsu since April, the Southern Weekend said.
Their job was to defend the government when negative comments appeared on Internet bulletin boards and chatrooms, the weekly quoted local officials as saying.
The Southern Weekend article “ÂÆøËøÅÔºöºïÂغÁΩëÁªúËàÜËÆ∫ÂÆûË∑µ ” is here (in Chinese). See also Xiao Qiang’s testimony in front of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, “The Development and the State Control of the Chinese Internet.”