China wages propaganda war after Nobel

BEIJING — As soon as dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, China's censorship machine kicked in to suppress the news, but not even that could muzzle web users, especially those on Twitter.When the prize was announced on Friday in Oslo, the communist regime's propaganda department moved quickly to prevent any mention in its media -- television, radio, press, phone services and the Internet were all affected.Those who attempted to send text messages containing Liu's Chinese name found them blocked.The state network China Central Television carried not a word of the peace prize, preferring to open its nightly news programme with a report on floods in its southern province of Hainan.Initial reports on Liu on foreign networks such as CNN, BBC and French satellite channel TV5 were blacked out. And on popular Chinese web portals such as Sina or Sohu, the Nobel announcement was nowhere to be seen. "Chinese journalists have received directives from the propaganda department forbidding them from publishing anything" about Liu's prize, Renaud de Spens, a Beijing-based independent expert on China's media, told AFP.But De Spens said that censorship was becoming less effective on the Internet -- thought to be patrolled by around 40,000 "net police" but used by more than 420 million people in China.He said "many messages have slipped through the net," especially on microblogging sites such as Twitter -- which is blocked in China but accessible via virtual proxy networks -- and homegrown equivalents such as Sina's Weibo."A Chinese web user won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize," wrote one Weibo user, while others posted pictures of Liu. The dissident's wife Liu Xia, who has been put under house arrest and whose mobile phone is now out of service, managed to get her message out on Twitter."I saw Xiaobo and told him on the ninth at the prison that he won the prize. I will let you know more later. Everyone, please help me tweet. Thanks," she said on Sunday."Obviously, all these (communication) tools were not for

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