BEIJING – China’s Twitter-like websites are facing new threats of censorship.

One of the country’s top microblogs is down for maintenance, and the other three have begun displaying a “beta” tag to indicate they are in testing, though they have been operating for months.

Users worry that the changes are cover-ups for further restraints on speech in China, where Twitter itself is blocked. They have deluged Chinese cyberspace and the microblog operators with questions and theories about the changes.

Long Weilian, a China-based tech blogger who uses the name William Long, was skeptical about China’s top four microblogs suddenly posting “beta” tags or going “under maintenance.”

“Such a long time to figure that one out,” he tweeted Wednesday.

Chinese officials often fear that public opinion might spiral out of control as social networking — and social protests — boom among the world’s largest Internet population. The government unplugged Twitter and Facebook last year but has allowed domestic versions to fill the void while keeping them under scrutiny.

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BEIJING – A leading Chinese Internet regulator has vowed to reduce anonymity in China’s portion of cyberspace, calling for requirements that people to use their real names when buying a mobile phone or going online, according to a human rights group.

In an address to the national legislature in April, Wang Chen, director of the State Council Information Office, called for perfecting the extensive system of censorship the government uses to manage the fast-evolving Internet, according to a text of the speech obtained by New York-based Human Rights in China.

China’s regime has a complicated relationship with the freewheeling Internet, reflected in its recent standoff with Google over censorship of search results. China this week confirmed it had renewed Google’s license to operate, after the company agreed to stop automatically rerouting users to its Hong Kong site, which is not subject to China’s online censorship.

The Internet is China’s most open and lively forum for discussion, despite already pervasive censorship, but stricter controls could constrain users. The country’s online population has surged past 400 million, making it the world’s largest.

Chen’s comments were reported only briefly when they were made in April. Human Rights in China said the government quickly removed a full transcript posted on the legislature’s website. But the group said it found an unexpurgated text and the discrepancies show that Beijing is wary that its push for tighter information control might prove unpopular.

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ANKARA, Turkey – Furious over Internet insults of the country’s beloved founder, Turkey has gone on the offensive against Google, tightening a ban on YouTube and cutting public access to a host of Google-owned sites.

Turkey’s communications minister has accused the Internet giant of waging a battle against Turkey and dodging taxes. But the government faces widespread public anger and attacks from the political opposition for restricting freedoms.

Even the president has spoken out against banning internet sites — using his Twitter account — after Turkey restricted access to some Google pages earlier this month.

The controversy is a setback for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, which won plaudits for carrying out democratic reforms but now stands accused of placing Turkey in the same class as countries already notorious for tight Internet controls.

“If the government doesn’t now put an end to the Internet ban that has extended to certain Google services … Erdogan’s name will be remembered along with that of Internet prohibiter Ahmadinejad,” wrote Haluk Sahin, a professor of media studies and columnist for Radikal newspaper, referring to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iran cracked down on free use of the Internet during its disputed presidential election last summer.

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SHANGHAI – Shanghai has Wall Street-size ambitions for its financial markets, and this month, it got a charging bronze bull to match those aspirations. Symbolically, the timing was a tad off.

After two years of more or less standing firm while markets elsewhere floundered, China’s share markets are feeling some pain of their own, as investors react to policies aimed at cooling surging housing prices — and to growing uncertainties over how big, bad and messy the fallout will be from the European financial crisis.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index has bounced past one-year lows, shedding about 20 percent since the beginning of the year despite the economy’s nearly 12 percent expansion in the first quarter.

Last year, the share index gained 60 percent, far outperforming many other markets as China weathered the global crisis with just a brief slowdown. But now, even with the economy back to double-digit growth rates, analysts say there is no sign of a rebound in sight.

Meanwhile, a stock exchange meant to nurture small and high-tech enterprises, modeled on the U.S.-based Nasdaq, is viewed as precariously overvalued, with companies trading at 64 times earnings per share on average.

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