The Epoch Times reported that, at around 1:00 p.m. in the afternoon on February 11, a man used a knife to attack people in the “Joy City” shopping center in Xi Dan district of Beijing. He killed one woman and injured 12 other people. The suspect was arrested on the scene. He was identified as a 35 year old male from Henan Province and allegedly used the knife to attack people to vent his personal anger. Beijing raised the security alert to level 1. Starting at 9:00 p.m. on the same day, 200,000 police were seen patrolling the streets overnight, especially in populated areas such as at public transportation stops, stores open for 24 hours, and businesses open late at night. The next day, over 700,000 people wearing red armbands, a red hat and “Chaoyang resident (indicating a security force consisting of common people)” could be seen patrolling the streets throughout Beijing. People’s online comments following the official media report expressed concerns for public safety and questioned why 200,000 security forces needed to be mobilized to patrol the streets. Other than the official news report on the incident, the rest of the online postings, videos, or news were blocked.

Source: Epoch Times, February 11, 2018
http://www.epochtimes.com/gb/18/2/11/n10135606.htm

According to an article that Xinhua published, since May 2017, the Public Security Bureau has been cracking down on the “Internet Water Army” which is a group of Internet ghostwriters who are paid to post online comments with a particular content {to “flood” the Internet}. The article stated that the Public Security Bureau has successfully solved 40 criminal cases with hundreds of millions of yuan in operation, arrested over 200 people, confiscated 5,000 online accounts and over ten thousand online websites and hundreds of thousands of online postings. The article reported that the “Internet water army” operates like an “Internet mafia.” It uses stolen personal information to send spam text or emails, gambling messages, to spread rumors in social media or to make up fake news using contents that slander others illegally or to manage online postings to make money.

{Editor’s note: The vigor of the crackdown suggests that there may be a large practice of disseminating information on the Internet that the government wants to control. The government calls all of it “faking or manipulating public opinion on the Internet.” The government is cleaning up the privately-run practices, but the CCP itself still manages the largest group, which is infamously known as the “Fifty Cent Party.” The name originated in the early days when the government paid each participant fifty cents for each posting of an article or comment that followed scripts that the CCP officially provided.}

Source: Xinhua, February 4, 2018
http://www.xinhuanet.com/legal/2018-02/04/c_1122366587.htm