May 2013 – May 2014
President and CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping framed the internet as a battlefield for ideological control and appointed himself the head of a top-level internet security committee (see Introduction).
The State Internet Information Office consolidated content restrictions with a harsh crackdown on rumors under newly appointed “Internet Tsar” Lu Wei (see Limits on Content and Violations of User Rights).
A September 2013 judicial interpretation criminalized a range of online content viewed more than 5,000 times or shared by 500 internet users (see Violations of User Rights).
High-profile businessmen were among hundreds detained or interrogated for supposedly abusing their online influence as controls on microblogs tightened (see Violations of User Rights).
Legal activist Xu Zhiyong was jailed for four years for disturbing order and “public spaces on the internet” in April 2014 (see Violations of User Rights).
Telecommunications were shut off in a restive area of Xinjiang; and Uighur academic Ilham Tohti was charged with antistate activity via his website (see Obstacles to Access and Violations of User Rights).
A court in Hainan jailed an internet police officer for accepting bribes to issue takedown notices via instant message to web platforms in his jurisdiction (see Limits on Content).