Caixin and Weibos Block Access to Report on Private/Public Cooperation in Internet Censorship

At 11:41 am on February 18, 2013, the state-sponsored Caixin Magazine posted the following on its verified Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo accounts:

[Exclusive Report: The Post Deletion Business] Caixin reporters have discovered that "post deletion" has long-since moved beyond the crude models of earlier years, becoming inter-linked grey industry where senior levels in public relations companies and portal web sites, as well as some overseeing officials, work hand-in-hand. It costs thousands to delete a negative news article, hundreds of thousands in professional fees to get a key word blocked, and those asking to get posts deleted range from users and companies to government officials.
【独家报道：删帖生意】财新记者发现，“删帖”早已脱离了早年的粗放模式，成为一条由公关公司、门户网站中高层甚至部分监管官员联手操纵的灰色产业链。删一条负面新闻要几千上万元，屏蔽关键词业务收费多达百万元，要求删帖的客户既有企业，也有政府官员。

This screenshot shows that, within hours of these posts appearing Sina Weibo began censoring searches for "The post deletion business." (删帖生意)

 These screenshots were taken on February 18 (left) and 19 (right), and show that Caixin's posts were deleted the same night.

Caixin's Weibo posts included a link to this URL - http://magazine.caixin.com/2013-02-08/100490897.html, which provides a preview of the article for non-subscribers. The preview reads:

On a Monday morning in mid-July 2012, three police buses drove into one of Sanlintun Sohu's flourishing merchant centers, and over 100 policemen stormed into the offices of Xinxun Tianxia Advertising (hereafter Xinxun Media) and Yage Times Advertising Ltd. (hereafter Yage Times), with some of the police controlling the employees and the others confisicating the offices' computers and locking up all of the employees' QQ chat records. Afterwards, 100 employees at the scene (including maintenance and cleaning crews) were loaded on the busses and by around 3:00 were taken to the Hadian district police station to give statements.
2012年7月中旬的一个周一上午，位于北京最繁华商圈之一的三里屯SOHO开进了三辆警务大巴，100多名警察冲入新讯天下广告传媒有限公司（下称新讯传媒）和雅歌时代广告传媒有限公司（下称雅歌时代）的办公室，一部分警察负责控制在场员工，另一部分警察搜查办公电脑，当场封存了所有员工的QQ聊天记录。随后，在场100多名员工（包括清洁工阿姨）都被带上大巴，15时左右分送海淀区各派出所做笔录。

Although the preview remained available and reports indicate that subscribers could still access the full report, this screenshot, taken on the evening of February 18, shows that, within hours the publicly-available version posted here - http://magazine.caixin.com/2013-02-08/100490897_all.html - had been deleted and visitors to that URL were being re-directed to Caixin's home page.

Caixin also published an English language version of the article here - http://english.caixin.com/2013-02-19/100492242.html. That version, however, omitted almost every reference to the role of government officials in funding and enabling the post deletion business.

Here are some translated excerpts from the original Chinese language article.

Many business managers do not know what what their day-to-day work is -- illegally deleting posts. According to Article 164 of China's Criminal Law, bribing web site employees is considered "bribing a non-government employee." As for bribing government employees at Internet management offices and Internet oversight offices, that is considered the "crime of bribery" under the provisions of Article 389. In various situations it is also considered the "crime of extortion." Coordinating web sites to actively publish negative information and finding enterprises to contact the businesses also falls under this category of crime.

The legal representative of Xinxun Media is Gu Wenxi, and the legal representative of Yage Times is Ai Nuo, and the actual behind-the-scenes control is exercised by Yage Times General Manger Gu Dengda. Gu Wenxi is Gu Dengda's father, and Ai Nuo is Gu Dengda's wife. Xinxun Media's business has nothing to do with post deletion, but Yage Times is famous within the industry as "post deletion company," and both companies' offices are located in a 600 ping location in Sanlitun Soho. Since the second half of 2006 Yage Times is believed to have gotten into the business of post deletion with over 100 employees. 

Most employees who were present [during the raid] were allowed to leave following questioning, but Yage Times General Manager Gu Gengda, his brother Gu Tengfei, and finance manager Ai Nuo continued to be investigated, and the three continue to be detained in jail. 

This was only the beginning. As the investigation of Yage Times deepens, the list of those implicated continues to grow, with employees of many web sites being arresting or investigated. Police officers at the Beijing Public Security Internet Oversight Office have also been arrested.
. . . .
Most public relations companies would buy editors and mid-to-high level administrative employees and officials at oversight agencies to complete their deletion mission. In order to increase profits some business managers wouldn't flinch at taking significant risks, including creating government and oversight agency chops and forged notices demanding web sites delete posts. Even more extreme, public relations companies would go so far as to manufacture their own clients, and would use vendors' web sites to posts negative information about companies until the companies would pay to get them deleted. This business has become a kind of blackmail, and companies suffered miserably. 

For some time now the post deletion business has remained in the shadows, overseen by no one, and has been a source of no small amount of profit for public relations companies. Among these were companies like Yage Times, whose primary business model was post deletion, as well as many famous public relations companies who took up related business, taking fees directly or indirectly. According to a former high level employee at Yage Times, in 2011 alone Yage Times' gross profits exceeded 50 million yuan, with over half of its income coming from deleting posts for government officials from second and third tier cities. 
. . . .
According to a Yage Times employee, over 60% of the companies profits came from "officials in second and third tier cities, with most being police officers and county leaders." Most of enterprise clients found the service on their own, but employees would need to do some digging to get individual clients. As soon as any negative information about a local official appeared, the employee would use measures such as directory information to come up with ways to find the people to contact about getting the post deleted. 

As far as the employees were concerned, as compared to enterprise clients, finding officials who wanted posts deleted was "it seemed everyone you asked willing," especially during the period immediately before and after the  "two meetings" [the National People's Congress and China People's Political Consultative Conference held every March in Beijing]. Companies were subject to cost restrictions, and would decide whether or not to shell out for post deletion based on their assessment of influence of the negative news. Out of concern for their careers, government officials would get posts deleted regardless of price, and Gu Tengda once told the company's salespeople during an internal instruction session: "don't take less than 500,000 yuan per." 

At Yage Times, only about a dozen senior employees and a very small number of senior relations employees were qualified to accept government official post deletion jobs. Their salaries were far higher than other employees, easily pulling in 200,000 to 500,000 yuan a month, with large desks and Apple computers in their office and expensing 100 yuan lunches at a famous Taiwanese restaurant in Sanlitun.
. . . .
With respect to news that has been broadly reposted, the first order of business is to delete the originating web site. Yage Times employees recall one time when they landed a big job, where a Shenzhen private recruiting company was exposed as a pyramid scheme, adn the news was reposted on hundreds of web sites and forums including People's Daily and Xinhua. That company had bid 1,000,000 yuan for getting all posts deleted. Ten Yage Times employees took on the task and at first expended significant effort getting the original negative news "public relationized." Afterwards they went to each and every other site that had reposted the news and demanded it be deleted. It took about two months to complete the job, at a cost of only 10,000 yuan. Currently most major domestic news web site and news reposting web sites and web portals and finance web sites have a similar rule: as long as the relevant company or public relations firm can provide formal letter by fax proving that the web site where the story originated (whether paper media or web site) has stated that it has already revised it or deleted it, they will then unconditionally automatically comply and handle the reposted content in the same way.
. . . .
It is relatively easy to handle content posted on forums and PostBar, but the cost of handling news articles posted on web portals is relatively high. One "moderator" gave 4,000 yuan the price in response to request to delete a news linked from Sina's Finance Channel. 

However, this "moderator" made it clear to this reporter that, in the past he could go through Baidu keyword blocking to remove the influence of negative, but now owing to connections, "No one in the world can achieve that."
. . . .
Every Friday, senior employees from the major web sites (chief auditor and above) have to go to the Internet management office for a meeting. All major web sites have established public sentiment oversight departments and government relations departments to liaison with Internet oversight agencies. One web site went so far as to set up a police affairs office to be able to handle visits by oversight officials at any time. These orders are frequently used by public relations firms with special connections to smuggle in their own contraband. One person inside Yage Times gave an example: an official in the Shaanxi Land Resources Bureau once sought out a public relations firm to request the deletion of news showing photos of him wearing an expensive watch, and afterwards the public relations firm employed its special relationships to achieve the deletion goal. 

很多业务员不知道他们日常工作的内容——删帖行为违法。根据中华人民共和国《刑法》第164条，对网站工作人员的行贿涉及“对非国家工作人员行贿罪”；对属于政府工作人员的网管办或网监处官员的行贿，则涉及《刑法》第389条规定的“行贿罪”。个别情况下，也涉及“敲诈勒索罪”。联合网站主动发布负面信息，找企业联系业务，即属此类。
新讯传媒法人代表为顾文喜，雅歌时代的法人代表为艾娜，背后实际控制人均为雅歌时代的总经理顾腾达，顾文喜是顾腾达的父亲，艾娜为顾腾达之妻。新讯传媒的业务与删帖无关，但雅歌时代是业内有名的“删帖公司”，两家公司都在三里屯SOHO 600余平方米的办公室办公。雅歌时代从2006年下半年涉足删帖业务，员工上百人。
现场员工接受问讯完毕之后大部分获准离开，雅歌时代总经理顾腾达、其弟顾腾飞、负责财务的艾娜被继续调查，三人至今仍被关押在看守所。
这只是一个开始。随着对雅歌时代调查的深入，牵涉的名单越来越长，多家网站有工作人员被捕或被调查，北京市公安局网监处亦有警员被捕。
. . . .
公关公司大多通过收买网站编辑以及中高层管理人员、监管部门人士完成删帖业务，有的业务员为赚取高额利润不惜铤而走险，通过私刻政府、监管部门公章，伪造通知要求网站删帖。更有甚者，公关公司自己给自己制造客户，通过外包门户网站频道并在外包频道上转发企业负面新闻，直到企业出钱才给删除——这一行径已成变相勒索，令企业苦不堪言。
长期以来，删帖生意隐而不显，无人监管，给公关公司带来不菲的利润，其中既有像雅歌时代这样以删帖为主要生意模式的公关公司，也有很多知名公关公司承接相关业务，直接或间接收费。据雅歌时代一位前高管透露，仅2011年一年雅歌时代的毛利就高达5000万元，一半以上收入来自于二三线城市政府官员删帖。
. . . .
据一位雅歌时代员工透露，公司超过60%以上的利润来自于“二三线城市的官员，多为警察局长和县长”。企业客户一般是自己找上门，个人客户则需要业务员挖掘。一旦出现地方官员负面信息，业务员通过查号台或其他办法，设法找到当事人联系删帖事宜。
在业务员看来，比起企业删帖，找官员删帖“几乎是一找一个准”，特别是“两会”前后。企业有成本限制，会评估负面新闻的影响来考虑是否要在删帖上投入成本。官员为了仕途，删帖不计成本，顾腾达曾在公司内部对销售员培训时称，“一单至少50万元”。
在雅歌时代，只有十几名老员工和有极少数有高层关系的员工，有资格承接官员删帖业务。他们的收入远高于其他员工，每月能轻松拿到2万-5万元，他们在办公室有大办公桌和苹果电脑，中午一般在三里屯一家人均消费百元左右的知名台湾菜餐厅就餐。
. . . .
对于转载较多的新闻，首先要删除源头网站。雅歌时代员工回忆曾经接过的一个大单，是深圳的一家私募公司被揭露带有传销性质，当时包括人民网、新华网在内全国几百家网站和论坛都转载了，这家公司报价100万元，要求将所有帖子删除。雅歌时代的十余名员工分批接受任务，先花大力气把源头的负面新闻公关掉，然后一家家找转载的网站，要求删除转载的新闻，这宗单子前后耗时两月，成本仅1万多元。
目前国内主流新闻网站或转载新闻的门户网站、财经网站一般都有类似规定：只要相关企业或公关公司能提供公函传真，证实其网站所转载的原始媒体（纸媒或网站原创稿件）的新闻表述已经重新修订或直接删除，便可以针对其转载内容做无条件自动配合完成同样的更新处理。
. . . .
论坛贴吧发帖内容的处理相对容易，而发布于门户网站各子频道的新闻页面，操作成本较高。这位“小二”针对新浪财经频道的一条新闻链接的删帖需求，给出的报价为4000元。
不过，“小二”也明确告知记者，以前他们还有可能通过百度关键字屏蔽来实现消除负面新闻影响的目的，但现在因为人脉的原因，“全世界都做不了了”。
. . . .
每周五，大的网站负责内容的高管（至少总监以上）要去网管办开会。大型网站都设立了舆情监控部门和政府事务部门对接网络监管部门。一家网站甚至专门成立警务工作室，以便随时接待监管人员。但这些命令中不时会被有特殊关系的公关公司利用，夹带私货。雅歌时代的一位内部人士举例说，陕西国土资源局的一位领导曾找公关公司要求删除戴天价表图片的新闻，后来公关公司就是动用了特殊关系才达到了删帖目的。