Celebrity bloggers - confession and contrition

Beleaguered online celebrity Xue Charles Bi-Chuen, already awash in a sea of troubles, may soon have a few more.

On Saturday Beijing police detained an environmentalist accused of fabricating online rumors, who allegedly confessed to working with Xue in manipulating online opinion.

Dong Liangjie claims that he posted a large amount unverified news on environmental pollution at weibo.com, a Chinese twitter clone, to incite public panic and promote his company's water filters.

Xue supposedly helped him amass followers and online influence by forwarding his posts and helping him plan future sensationalist topics, Dong said from his detention center in Beijing.

Xue, a Chinese-American venture capitalist, was detained last month on charges of having had group sex with prostitutes. As a star blogger, with legions of followers on Weibo, Xue was seen as an online crusader for justice and his arrest astounded Chinese netizens.

Dong is a very different character, a Chinese national who studied in the United States.

The police said the investigation into Dong's and Xue's suspected crimes continues.

According to a judicial interpretation effective since September, a crime occurs if online falsehoods are are viewed by more than 5,000 Internet users or retweeted more than 500 times.

The Chinese government on Saturday denied that the recent crackdown on online rumormongers is meant to rein in public opinion, insisting that the crackdown will protect the legal right to freedom of speech.

PANIC MARKETING ONLINE

When Dong returned to China in 2008, he developed a water filter and formed a company to market the product. At first Dong's filter attracted little attention or investment. He turned to Weibo in 2011, where he found a free, influential platform for advertising his filter.

He opened an Weibo account and called himself an "environment protection expert," posting topics and comments on environment pollution. At that time, a nuclear disaster in Japan had whipped up a frenzy of Chinese fears about the environment.

Dong's followers soon leapt to hundreds of thousands, but still far fewer than he thought he deserved, he says.