BEIJING (Reuters) - Police in China have ordered that a person said to have spread a rumor that the central bank had announced a cut in a key bank reserve ratio be detained for five days, the Shanghai Securities News said on Wednesday.
The newspaper reported the move on its website, citing an unnamed source.
On March 29, private chat groups on China's social media platform WeChat shared what appeared to be a paragraph pasted from a story by the official Xinhua news agency saying the People's Bank of China had announced a cut in the reserve requirement ratio (RRR) to take effect two days later on April 1.
The central bank denied the reports a few hours later. On April 2, PBOC said it had asked the police to investigate the incident.
China has been stepping up efforts to police potentially destabilizing content on its already stringently censored internet.