More than 100 privately-run news websites have been shut down in China since May in what the government calls a move against extortionists, but what critics say is a campaign against citizen journalists.
Websites included The Voice of the People, Democratic Legal Supervision Net, Chinese Citizen News, Justice Online and similarly-named provincial websites.
Some government officials have spoken out defending the move. According to Ren Zhanzhou, a spokesman for Sanmenxia in Henan province, these websites have either not fulfilled registration requirements, are "fake news organisations" or have "fabricated or collected negative news to extort companies".
On July 17, censors took down his news website and disabled his microblog accounts. Zhu's writings have taken a "summer holiday", Zhan Jiang, a prominent professor of journalism at Beijing Foreign Studies University and acquaintance of Zhu, wrote in a microblog post.