Chris Buckley

China widened its attack against U.S. criticisms of Internet censorship on Monday, raising the stakes in a dispute that has put Google in the middle of a political quarrel between the two global powers.

China's population of Internet users jumped by nearly a third to 384 million at the end of last year.

China defended its extensive censorship and brushed aside hacking claims on Thursday, telling companies not to buck state control of the Internet after Google threatened to quit the country.

China has delayed indefinitely a much-criticized plan to force manufacturers to bundle Internet filtering software with personal computers sold in the country, in an abrupt retreat hours before the policy was due to start.

China on Thursday stepped up accusations that Google is spreading obscene content over the Internet, a day after U.S. officials urged Beijing to abandon plans for controversial filtering software on new computers.

China on Tuesday rejected a report suggesting it may be involved in using computer networks to spy on exiled Tibetans and foreign governments, accusing its authors of being possessed by "the ghost of the Cold War." China has been repeatedly accused of using the Internet to secretly enter computer networks abroad to carry out sabotage and gather intelligence, and it has repeatedly denied such claims.

Chinese police have arrested 28 suspects in an expanding crackdown on Internet pornography that authorities vowed will be no "flash in the pan," official media said Friday. The campaign to scrub the country's Internet of "vulgar" content has so far resulted in 29 criminal cases and police have ordered the removal of 46,000 pornographic and other "harmful" items from websites, the Xinhua news agency reported.