Reporters Without Borders, a media watchdog group, has accused American Internet giant Yahoo of helping the Chinese government track down Shi Tao, a journalist, who later was sentenced on charges of e-mailing state secrets. Shi, 37, had been an editor at Contemporary Business News. In April 2004, he attended an editorial meeting in which officials read out an internal document outlining media restrictions ahead of the 15th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, according to Reporters Without Borders
Shi was arrested in November at his home in northwestern China's Shanxi province and sentenced in April to 10 years in prison.The court document stated that evidence of the crime came from Yahoo Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd. Shi sent the e-mail from his terminal on April 20, 2004 according to Reporters Without Borders.
In China, nearly 100 million Internet users, second only to that of the U.S. (Source: Ching-Ching Ni, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 8, 2005).