"In the absence of a free press in China, the internet, despite attempts at censorship, can sometimes put the brakes on official abuses of power. But it can also go too far. As the state-run news agency, Xinhua, put it, “You may find yourself up before a kangaroo court of angry netizens and receive a virtual lynching."

China’s online vigilantism. Bizarre take out from the Economist article: the Chinese equivalent term for crowdsourcing is “human-flesh searching”.