Xinhua News Agency

A high-ranking Chinese official on Tuesday again rejected all accusations of involvement of his government in any hacking attacks against Western companies.

"The government has never supported or been involved in cyber attacks, and it will never do so. Those remarks are sheer nonsense," said Peng Bo, of the Internet bureau of the State Council's Information Office.

The Chinese government has arrested three hackers who were running an online hacker-training business. The trio of hackers operated Black Hawk Safety Net, a company that collected nearly $1 million from more than 120,000 members.

The three unidentified individuals were arrested after using the now-defunct 3800CC.com web site to train and provide the necessary tools to wannabe hackers, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency. Government authorities seized $249,000 in cash, nine servers, five computers and a car from the company.

Chinese Internet users will not be forced to install the controversial Green Dam Internet filtering software, a top official said Thursday.

While the installation of the software on computers in public places including schools and Internet cafés would proceed, consumers would be free to choose whether or not to install the filter, Minister of Industry and Information Technology Li Yizhong was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua news agency.

Li's comments are the strongest indicator yet that the government has abandoned original plans to make the filter compulsory.

Paris Hilton we understand -- but Garfield? China's mandated Green Dam software rates some images of the scantily clad heiress and the cartoon cat as morally bad.

While the software that must be installed on all new PCs sold in China is meant to block pornography and violent images, it also blocks other things. Besides Garfield, actor Johnny Depp and roast port are also no-nos.

The Chinese manufacturer of Internet-filtering software that must be distributed with all new computers next week has received death threats, state media said Wednesday.

Workers at Jinhui Computer System Engineering Co. received more than 1,000 harassing phone calls this month, according to Zhang Chenmin, the general manager of the company. He said personal information of some of the programmers had been leaked online, and one caller threatened to kill his wife and child.

A video that appears to show police fatally beating a Tibetan protester was a fake concocted by supporters of the Dalai Lama, China said Tuesday -- the same day the video-sharing network YouTube said its service had been blocked in China.

The video has been posted on YouTube in recent days.

A spokesman for Google, which owns YouTube, said he couldn't comment on the Chinese government's reason for the block.

"We are looking into it and working to ensure that the service is restored as soon as possible," spokesman Scott Rubin said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

China's State Intellectual Property Office has denied a flurry of media reports suggesting the government agency was investigating Microsoft for discriminatory software pricing. In a statement briefly posted at its official Web site, according to media sources, the SIPO noted that it has never undertaken any market-monopoly investigations before, and has no plans to do so because its mandate from Chinese government agencies is "to investigate and research domestic piracy issues."

China's biggest mobile phone company will take over a smaller fixed-line carrier, a state news agency said Friday, in what was expected to be the start of a sweeping industry restructuring.

China Mobile Communications Corp. will acquire China Railway Communication, also known as Tietong, the Xinhua News Agency said, citing information from state-owned China Mobile.