Separate roles

Police said members of the group barely knew one another, but there were clear lines of demarcation between three separate roles they performed.

Some were assigned to hunt for potential clients and negotiate the services to be provided and the price.

They listed links to negative posts about their clients in the chat group forum and contacted a second group of members, the representatives and agents of those able to carry out the deletion - mainly hackers or the owners or administrators of online forums.

To the uninitiated, deleting online posts may seem innocuous. However, Chinese law takes a dim view of it.

Not only does it impede the free circulation of information, Luo said, but it is in fact a crime. Some of those engaged in the business said they were unaware that they had broken the law.

In September 2013, the top court and the top procuratorate issued a legal interpretation to guide criminal trials involving the publication and circulation of information on the Internet. Providing a service to delete online posts is punishable if it generates a total profit of more than 20,000 yuan, and the supplier of the service will face a minimum penalty of five years in prison if he or she receives more than 250,000 yuan from the business.

However, this does not mean that no posts may be deleted. Everyone enjoys legal protection for their reputation and can ask a website to remove untrue or defamatory posts about them for free.

An administrator at online forum Xici Hutong said there is no charge for deleting a post if a complaint about misinformation is received with proof that the allegations made are untrue.

Acting as accomplices

Administrators at a number of websites have been found to be acting as accomplices in the illegal business.

The Cyberspace Administration Office said more than 100 websites have been shut down for deleting posts in exchange for payment since January. Some cases involving allegations of serious violations of the law have been handed over to the police for further investigation.

Tencent QQ has closed 512 accounts because of alleged misuse by gangs offering deletion services and removed nearly 13,000 blog accounts linked to such activities since the beginning of the year, according to the office.

An official said most of the websites were unregistered or had been registered with false information. For example, a website called China News Hotline Network mainly provided deletion services, but operated under the guise of exposing information that was in the public interest.

The network collected negative information about companies and individuals from other websites, left its contact details on its site, and waited for those wishing to have posts deleted to contact them.

Some websites of this kind ask clients to list payments for their services as advertising costs, sponsorship fees or partnership payments.

Others claim they are portals for government entities and extort money from clients who do not want to see negative material about them published on such sites.

Some sites blackmail companies by threatening to spread negative news about them if they are unwilling to pay a large amount of money.

Beijing police are investigating a case in which Chen Ruigang, head of the environmental protection channel of the China Economics website, allegedly asked a company to pay 300,000 yuan to delete a news story accusing it of causing pollution.

Ten companies have been blackmailed by Chen for a total of 6 million yuan during the past three years, according to police.

An editor surnamed Qiu at the Phoenix News website was sentenced to five years in prison in June for accepting 118,000 yuan for deleting negative news items on his website from October 2012 to October 2013.

As well as website administrators, some highflying government officials in charge of publicity departments are also involved in the deletion business.

Gao Jianyun, former deputy head of a bureau of the Communist Party of China's publicity department, has been found guilty of taking huge bribes and deleting online negative information about a company. He was removed from his post and expelled from the Party in April last year, according to a statement issued by the country's top graft fighters.

"The practice greatly undermines the business environment of regular websites and legal information services," said Wu Ming'an, a criminal law professor at China University of Political Science and Law.

Everyone has the right to express themselves freely online and post their opinions, and such posts are protected by law, he added.

"Under criminal law, the supplier of the service commits the offense of operating an illegal business. Efforts to clamp down on such services are intended to safeguard freedom of expression and protect regular business order in the Internet information technology sector."

Sun Jungong, spokesman for the country's top court, said posts being deleted by so-called crisis management companies are mostly legitimate comments that play an important role in the exchange of information.

"Information flow is a major function of the Internet and therefore there is a need to regulate website services to protect this function," Sun said.

Deleting online posts for profit violates the statutory rights of netizens and jeopardizes regular business order, he added.