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China’s ability to allow the freedom of speech appears to be waning even more than usual. While blogs are the perfect outlet for speaking your mind for the entire world to read, China believes this freedom is more than its citizens should have at their disposal.

According to a recent Associated Press (News - Alert) report, the country has opted to shut down some of China’s most outspoken blogs. At the same time, services that are Twitter-like in nature, are the newest target in the government’s efforts to control social networking.

Chinese bloggers are increasingly relying on newer, microblogs as their primary publishing tool. They can add punchy messages to the sties to chat with friends or promote their longer blog posts. With this growth in popularity, it appears to be too much for one of the country’s four microblog sites as it is down for maintenance.

Users grew suspicious when they noticed the other three sites show a “beta” tag (News - Alert) as if they are in testing mode, even though they launched months ago. The combination of events suggests something bigger is at play here. And, it doesn’t help that the companies behind the sites aren’t talking.

Officials in China have made it clear that they fear public opinion could enter into unchartered waters, spiraling out of control if social networking continues on its current boom. China has the world’s most extensive Internet monitoring and filtering system. Last year, officials unplugged Twitter and Facebook (News - Alert).

Yao Yuan is a well-known blogger in China. He has listed at least 61 Sohu blogs that have been closed, including his own, on a separate blog that has yet to be blocked. He has referred to the actions by the government as mass murder.

"If Internet users don't speak out, all sites will be cracked down on in the future," said Yao, in the AP piece. Yuan owns an Internet-promotion company in Shanghai. "Ordinary people will forever lose their freedom to speak online, and the government can rest without worrying anymore."

Xiao Qiang, the director of the China Internet Project at the University of California-Berkeley, noted that microblogs have the ability to quickly aggregate critical voices, which is one of the reasons authorities are on edge and have been increasing their controls. The challenge these authorities face, however, is that microblogging runs at warp speed and high volume and Chinese censors are still several steps behind.

"As long as our country's Internet is linked to the global Internet, there will be channels and means for all sorts of harmful foreign information to appear on our domestic Internet," Wang Chen, director of the State Council Information Office, said in comments released by the New York-based group Human Rights in China. "Many weak links still exist in our work. These problems have weakened our ability to manage the Internet scientifically and effectively."

Given the expected growth of the Internet and the constantly expanding blogging and microblogging population, China may never actually get ahead of the social networking phenomenon, putting their entire social networking system at risk of complete shutdown.