A regulation banning online manhunts has been passed in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province, the local people's congress said on its website yesterday.

The regulation, which prevents people from publishing "private information" on the Internet, will be implemented on June 6, it said.

People who do so will be fined up to 5,000 yuan and could be banned from using the Internet for six months, the notice said without elaborating.

An anonymous spokesman for the National People's Congress Standing Committee's Legislative Affairs Commission in Xuzhou said it is illegal to publish people's personal information online.

"Private information, such as age, salary, and relationship status are always targeted during online manhunts," he said.

A recent online manhunt involved Zhou Jiugeng, an official from Nanjing, Jiangsu province, who was shown in a photograph published online wearing a 100,000 yuan ($14,600) watch and smoking expensive cigarettes.

The public outcry led to the local government ordering a probe into Zhou's financial affairs. He was found to have used public funds to buy the cigarettes and was sacked.

Dong Zhengwei, a lawyer in Beijing, said publishing information about people online is fine as long as it is true.

"It's fair for members of the public to monitor officials, but under the new rules if they publish things about them that are not true they will be breaking the law," he said.

A netizen said on an online forum of www.yangtse.com: "I really doubt whom the new law is going to protect, as online manhunts can be conducted by corrupt officials."

(China Daily January 20, 2009)