At Sina Weibo's censorship hub, China's Little Brothers cleanse online chatter

By Li Hui and Megha Rajagopalan

TIANJIN, China (Reuters) - In a modern office building on the outskirts of the Chinese city of Tianjin, rows of censors stare at computer screens. Their mission: delete any post on Sina Weibo, China's version of Twitter, deemed offensive or politically unacceptable.

But the people behind the censorship of China's most popular microblogging site are not ageing Communist Party apparatchiks. Instead, they are new college graduates. Ambivalent about deleting posts, they grumble loudly about the workload and pay.

Managing the Internet is a major challenge for China. The ruling Communist Party sees censorship as key to maintaining its grip on power - indeed, new measures unveiled on Monday threaten jail time for spreading rumours online.

At the same time, China wants to give people a way to blow off steam when other forms of political protest are restricted.

Reuters interviewed four former censors at Sina Weibo, who all quit at various times this year. All declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the work they once did. Current censors declined to speak to Reuters.

"People are often torn when they start, but later they go numb and just do the job," said one former censor, who left because he felt the career prospects were poor. "One thing I can tell you is that we are worked very hard and paid very little."

Sina Corp, one of China's biggest Internet firms, runs the microblogging site, which has 500 million registered users. It also employs the censors.

The company did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

"STRESSFUL, DEAD-END JOB"

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At Sina Weibo's censorship hub, China's Little Brothers cleanse online chatter