By Lauren Hilgers

When migrant worker Sun Zhongjie recently faced the Shanghai court system, the 19-year-old from Henan, China, guessed his chances for justice were better online. Sun had been caught in a police trap: persuaded to pick up a plainclothes policeman and accused of operating an illegal taxi. In a gruesome play for attention, he chopped a finger off his left hand and went public. "In 24 hours everything you say will be on the Internet," Sun's lawyer threatened a local judge.

For people like Sun, the Internet is changing the equation of justice in China. Netizens are bringing a new level of scrutiny to court cases and local government affairs. If you're the little guy, you want China's Netizens in your corner. If you're wealthy, well connected, or happen to be a corrupt official, you probably want to avoid them altogether. 

As instances of Internet justice increase, people like Sun are learning to use the Net to their advantage and government officials--facing a population of more than 338 million online Chinese--are finding it harder to escape scrutiny. With so many people surfing the Web, the ranks of an online mob can swell in an instant. In one of the most famous examples this year--the case of a female pedicurist accused of murdering a local official while he was trying to rape her--Netizens flooded the Web with more than 4 million Internet posts protesting the charges against her.

These online vigilante efforts have proved to be effective. The pedicurist was released without punishment. Sun has been cleared of all charges; his finger has been surgically re-attached and a government team has been set up to regulate how traffic laws are enforced. Out of 84 officials targeted by Internet scrutiny in the past year, one quarter have lost their jobs, according to Steven Dong, the director of global journalism at Tsinghua University. Dong says there has been a significant uptick in such scru-tiny over the past year, more so than ever before. 

But Chinese officials are starting to fight back. While some still react to citizen Net surveillance with censorship attempts, more and more are responding with their own online PR.  In Guangdong, officials recently sanctioned the first meeting of a "Netizens forum." "In the Internet age," an article in a state-run magazine recently counseled, "every civil servant is the 'image ambassador' for the government and for the Party."  If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.