Police have also arrested six people, while the country's two most popular microblogs, run by Sina.com and Tencent, said they would stop users from posting comments to other people's posts until Tuesday.
The crackdown follows a surge in unsubstantiated online rumours about a coup led by security chief Zhou Yongkang, following the March dismissal of rising political star Bo Xilai.
Bo, removed as party chief of the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing after his former police chief fled to a US consulate and reportedly demanded political asylum, had been tipped to join the country's top echelons of power.
His downfall was only lightly covered by China's tightly controlled state media, opening the way for groundless rumours about a coup to spread on the Internet.
In an editorial, the People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, pledged to punish those responsible for the "lies and speculation".
"Online rumours undermine the morale of the public and if out of control, they will seriously disturb the public order and affect social stability," said the newspaper, according to Xinhua.
China says it is stepping up efforts to "cleanse" cyberspace, in what many see as a restriction on web freedom in the country, where a vast censorship system blocks sites including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
ORIGINAL SOURCE
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