CHINA has closed 42 websites and deleted more than 210,000 online posts since March in a crackdown on “internet-based rumours”, state media said today.
The news, announced by the official Xinhua news agency in a brief report, comes as China is rocked by its biggest political crisis in decades with the purge of a top leader from the Communist Party, Bo Xilai, and the detention of his wife, Gu Kailai, on suspicion of the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood.
Mr Heywood, a strategic consultant, was found dead in Chongqing last November.