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I got the most ah-mayzing canned message from Sina Weibo's glorious legality enforcers a couple of days ago, informing me that some people who had been saying too much online had been, erm, prevented from continuing to do so, and warning me not to follow the same path.  <!--more-->

<img src="http://chinesereadingpractice.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/20120428-INLINE.jpg" alt="Chinese Reading Material: Free Advanced Chinese Lessons" title="Learn to Read Chinese: Read Advanced Chinese Essays" width="100" height="100" class="imgborder alignleft" />In this note, which I presume everyone on Sina Weibo got, I was warned not to listen to all the "political rumors" that are being spread - rumors which I hadn't heard about until I got the warning and will now trot off to Google. We often hear about how this kind of thing happens in China - now's your chance to read it straight from the horse's mouth. 

For those of you just tuning in, Sina Weibo (新浪微博 - you'll see those words a couple of times in the post) is China's most popular Twitter-esque microblog platform. 微博 [pinyin]wei1 bo2[/pinyin] means "microblog", 新浪 is the particular microblog platform (China has several competing microblogs, as opposed to just the one Twitter).

As you read through this, bear in mind that the words in "quotes" are usernames, hence the strange collection of characters.

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<div class="postintro">
<h4>Click to Listen</h4>
不法分子 - [pinyin]bu4 fa3 fen4 zi3[/pinyin] - Lawbreaker
编造 - [pinyin]bian1 zao4[/pinyin] - Fabricate, make up
谣言 - [pinyin]yao2 yan2[/pinyin] - Rumors
恶劣 - [pinyin]e4 lie4[/pinyin] - Nasty, vile
公安 - [pinyin]gong1 an1[/pinyin] - Public Security
依法 - [pinyin]yi1 fa3[/pinyin] - According to the law
处理 - [pinyin]chu3 li3[/pinyin] -  To deal with, to handle
处于 - [pinyin]chu3 yu2[/pinyin] - To be in a state of...
呼吁 - [pinyin]hu1 yu4[/pinyin] - To call on (someone to do sthg)
网民 - [pinyin]wang3 min2[/pinyin] - Netizens
维护 - [pinyin]wei2 hu4[/pinyin] - Safeguard, protect
社会秩序 - [pinyin]she4 hui4 zhi4 xu4[/pinyin] - social order
</div>
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<div id="chinesetext">
近期，一些<strong>不法分子</strong>利用新浪微博在互联网上无端<strong>编造</strong>、传播恶性政治<strong>谣言</strong>，产生了<strong>恶劣</strong>的社会影响，现已被<strong>公安</strong>机关<strong>依法</strong>予以<strong>处理</strong>，传播谣言的微博账号"李德林"、"阳光的元士"、"广州巫冠聪"和"龙逸天-945"已被关闭。在此，新浪微博<strong>呼吁</strong>广大<strong>网民</strong>自觉遵守法律法规，不传谣，不信谣，发现谣言及时举报，共同<strong>维护</strong>健康的网络环境和良好的<strong>社会秩序</strong>。 
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Recently, a few legal offenders used Sina Weibo to, for no reason at all, fabricate and disseminate malicious political rumors, giving rise to a nasty social influence. The Public Security Bureau has already dealt with them according to the law, and the rumor-spreading weibo accounts "Li De Lin", "Yuan Shi's Sunshine", "Clever Wizard's Hat in Guangzhou", and "Long Yi Tian - 945" have been shut down. Now, Sina Weibo calls on all netizens to be aware of complying with legal statutes, and not to spread or believe rumors, report rumors immediately, and together we will safeguard our healthy internet environment and good social order. 
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