Alarming emergence of 'online guillotine'

Two months ago, I wrote a column on micro-blogging in China that now makes me blush. I'm embarrassed to realize how fast the situation has changed and how myopic some of my views were.

First, I lamented that the compulsory use of real names on Chinese micro blogs had spawned a proliferation of trivial and mundane content by prominent bloggers, and pointless babble sometimes dominated micro blogs and could drown out threads and messages on serious issues.

As evidence, I pointed out that one of the hottest topics among "tycoon bloggers" had swirled around how a wealthy real estate developer had dumped his first wife and married a much younger woman who acted in popular television dramas. There was also the example of how an actress known as the Chinese blogging queen, with a following of 34 million, shared daily updates on her stay in the United States and later her second marriage.