Alleged rumormonger to stand trial for libel and provoking trouble

A microblogger arrested during a crackdown on rumormongering last year will have his first hearing in a Beijing court on Friday facing charges of defamation and "provoking trouble."

Qin Zhihui, better known by his online moniker Qin Huohuo, stands accused of perpetrating a series of online sensations that later turned out false.

Popular hits included a story that the Chinese government paid 30 million euros ($41 million) to a foreign passenger after a high-speed train crash, and that Luo Yuan, a major general in the People's Liberation Army Academy of Military Sciences, had deserted the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War.

Qin's alleged dissemination of more than 3,000 phooey rumors caused a "serious social impact" and "seriously disturbed the social order," prosecutors allege.

In earlier reports, Qin was arrested on charges of provoking trouble and illegal business operation.

Provoking trouble was hard to assess and it was difficult to gauge how serious is "serious" social disorder, Li Jun, a lawyer at Anhui Zhibang law firm, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

The Supreme People's Court issued a judicial explanation in September last year, saying that a defamatory piece must be viewed more than 5,000 times or forwarded more than 500 times to incriminate the original poster.

Authorities in August 2013 launched a crackdown on online rumormongers, arresting online celebrities including Qin and the Chinese-American investor and microblogger Charles Xue for soliciting prostitutes.

Qin and the company where he worked also allegedly profited from illegal deletion of online posts for paying customers.