Two Chinese bloggers have been arrested for spreading rumors in social media

Beijing. May 11. Silkroadnews - Two Chinese citizens have been arrested on suspicion of spreading rumors about Yili Group, the country’s largest dairy company, and its chairman, Pan Gang, in WeChat messenger which led to a drop in the company’s market value by almost $1 billion, South China Morning Post reports.
Zou Guangxiang and Liu Chengkun were detained at their homes in Beijing by police officers who arrived from Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia, where the headquarters of Yili Group is located.
The arrests were made after the official investigation into case began, which caused protests over Beijing’s increasingly tight control on people’s right of people to freedom of online expression.
According to the article, headlined “Social media is also ruled by law” and published in one of the state media, the arrests came after Yili’s board chairman Pan Gang told the police about rumors, one of which claimed that Pan had himself been taken into custody. In fact, Pan has been on medical treatment in the US since leaving China on September 5.
Liu, a former journalist, is accused of writing a series of “fictional” stories which, while not naming either Yili or Pan, featured descriptions that bore striking resemblances to the company and the individual, the publication said.
Based on what Liu wrote, Zou announced online that Pan had been detained on his return to China from the US, where he had been running Yili for the past six months.
Both Liu and Zou’s articles were published on March 26. On the same day, Yili’s share price fell by more than 3.5%, causing the company a loss of nearly 6.1 billion yuan ($959.6 million) in value.
Despite popularity of social blogging in China, where WeChat alone has more than 20 million subscribers, Beijing has been steadily tightening censorship, and deletion of the posts becomes quite common.
However, the arrests of Zou and Liu aroused public outrage, as many users accused the police of acting in the interests of Yili, a major taxpayer and creator of jobs in Inner Mongolia.
Veteran reporter Wang Zhian urged the public to boycott Yili products.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists issued a statement calling for the release of Liu and Zou, and urged the Chinese authorities to stop the harassment of the media.