From the San Francisco Chronicle:
In the YouTube era, off-the-cuff remarks can haunt American politicians again and again. But that’s nothing compared to China, where scandals draw the scrutiny of thousands of Internet vigilantes.
With 253 million Internet users, China recently surpassed the United States with the world’s largest Web population. Many use online grassroots search engines known as renrou, or “human flesh,” to vent suspicions about alleged wrong-doers.
Mop.com, a Chinese entertainment site, first conceived of a renrou search as a way to exchange information on restaurants, cosmetics and more. One person asks a question and others reply, much as on U.S. sites such as Yahoo! Answers or Yelp, which rely on user-generated content.
But Chinese users soon found more excitement in exposing scandal.
