Chinese web users play cat and mouse with censors

Chinese played cat and mouse with the censors on the popular Twitter-like microblog service Weibo to express support for escaped blind dissident lawyer Chen Guangcheng, while China maintained its silence on what has happened to him.

Neither China nor the United States has commented on whether Chen has sought refuge in the US embassy, as activists and one diplomat contend, in a drama that threatens to overshadow a two-day Sino-US meeting in Beijing from Thursday, though both sides say the meeting will proceed as scheduled.

China’s po-faced guardians of what can and cannot be said online were having their work cut out, moving quickly to block Weibo searches for the words “blind man”, which had previously been commonly employed to discuss matters related to Chen. They later blocked the words for embassy.