The Chinese government has instituted an elaborate system for Internet censorship that employs tens of thousands of censors and police responsible for maintaining control over the flow of information, a report released by international free press advocates showed.

Despite self-censorship and the filtering of government-banned words or phrases from articles, sites do occasionally broach subjects inadvertently. Penalties for such mistakes range from criticizing the site, imposing a fine, ordering the dismissal of the employee responsible, or closing down the site section or the entire site, the report said.