China: a blogger and a journalist arrested

Chinese blogger, arrested with a prostitute, and a journalist who reported high were arrested, police said Sunday, as Beijing has recently shown its willingness to strengthen its control of the Internet.

The billionaire Charles Xue, one of China's most popular bloggers with an account followed by almost 12 million people in the network Weibo, was arrested on Friday night. He published his last post a few hours ago.

Known for his incisive positions, supported a campaign as demanding greater transparency over pollution in China and issued a warning about the extent of child trafficking in the country.

Beijing police said Sunday in its official microblog have arrested Xu cited only by his surname, in the company of a girl of 22 years, and said that "frankly admitted the two had been involved in acts of prostitution."

His arrest was widely reported in Sunday's Weibo microblogging site where the pseudonym under which he wrote in his blog, Xue Manzi, arrived at the head of research users.

In a statement, the Metropolitan Police announced that the journalist Liu Hu had "been placed under arrest by law to have invented and sold the rumors."

Reporter tabloid News Express, Liu was taken last month in his Weibo account My Zhengqi, a former deputy mayor of Chongqing (southwest), the city has always led by the ousted leader Bo Xilai currently on trial for corruption.

Ma Liu accused of failing in their duties during the restructuring of a public company in the city, which has caused the loss of tens of millions of yuan (millions of euros).

I was then became deputy director of the State Administration of Industry and Commerce, a position he currently holds. Liu said "call the authorities (the) quit and open an investigation."

The focus of the journalist, who according to the testimony of his wife was arrested Friday at his home in Chongqing, said several similar cases in recent months.

Therefore, Wang Wenzhi, a journalist from the New China agency, published an open letter in July in which he accused the head of the state-owned company China Resources have lost billions of yuan into a possibly corrupt transaction .

The arrest of Charles Xue Hu and Liu came as the authorities have recently reaffirmed their commitment to better control the information available on Chinese social networks.