The Washington Post has a report with several accounts of the travails and successes of the authorities in China as they attempt to curtail the spread of information they disapprove. Officials who die in a tryst, under reported flood fatalities and banana rumors are some of the stories that are challenging China censors:

. . . party censors are now turning to China’s booming Internet and cellphone networks with particular vigor. Given the easy access to technologies such as text messaging, censors have found it difficult to keep a grip on information.

It hasn’t been for lack of trying. The Public Security Ministry, which monitors the Internet under guidance from the Central Propaganda Department, has recruited an estimated 30,000 people to snoop on electronic communications. The ministry recently introduced two cartoon characters — a male and female in police uniforms — that it said would pop up on computer screens occasionally to remind people that their activity is being tracked.