The 50-year-old software engineer was tapping away at his computer in November when state security officials filed into his office on mainland China.
They had an unusual – and nonnegotiable – request.
Delete these tweets, they said.
The agents handed over a printout of 60 posts the engineer had fired off to his 48,000 followers. The topics ranged from U.S.-China trade relations to the plight of underground Christians in his coastal province in southeast China.
When the engineer didn’t comply after 24 hours, he discovered that someone had hacked into his Twitter account – @hesuoge – and deleted its entire history of 11,000 tweets.
“If the authorities hack you, what can you do?” said the engineer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of landing in deeper trouble with authorities. “I felt completely drained.”
In Beijing and other cities across China, prominent Twitter users confirmed in interviews to The Washington Post that authorities are sharply escalating a Twitter crackdown. It suggests a wave of new and more aggressive tactics by state censors and cyber-watchers trying to control the Internet.