Australian Broadcast Corporation: China sends message to country's internet users

Authorities in China have sent a chilling message to the country's booming internet user population.

China correspondent Tom O'Byrne reports a website operator arrested for anti-government activities is facing the prospect of a long jail term.

A webmaster living in Chengdu has reportedly been taken away for questioning over content on a website based not in China but the United States. It originally served to link lost families and relatives, but recently began running anti-government material on the 1989 student massacre, communist party corruption, and the outlawed spiritual group Falun Gong. A human rights group based in Hong Kong says it's the first time a website creator has been arrested, a move it says will send a chill through investors about

the Chinese government's embrace of the internet. The arrest coincides with new official statistics, that ten million Chinese are now registered internet users.

http://www.abc.net.au/ra/newsrael/stories/rael-8jun2000-103.htm