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Chinese Journalists Protest Official Censorship
By Tom Phillips, Shanghai
10:39AM GMT 07 Jan 2013
By Tom Phillips, Shanghai
10:39AM GMT 07 Jan 2013
Demonstrators staged a protest in support of one of Chinas most respected and liberal newspapers as a feud over press freedom threatened to throw up the first major challenge to incoming president Xi Jinping.
Demonstrators gather outside the headquarters of the Southern Weekly newspaper in Guangzhou, Guangdong province Photo: REUTERS/James Pomfret
Witnesses said up to 200 people converged outside the Guangzhou newsroom of the Southern Weekend newspaper demanding an end to the stifling censorship of their countrys media.
Photographs posted on social media showed demonstrators carrying signs calling for free press, constitutional government and democracy.
The protest, which ended peacefully, was triggered by an acrimonious dispute between government officials and journalists from the Southern Weekend newspaper who claim censors have been conducting an increasingly aggressive clampdown on their work since last year.
The crisis exploded into the open on New Years Day after Southern Weekend reporters accused Tuo Zhen, Guangdong provinces propaganda chief, of transforming a lengthy newspaper editorial calling for political reform into a gushing homage to Chinas Communist Party.
According to an analysis by the University of Hong Kongs China Media Project, the original version argued Chinese citizens should be allowed to voice their criticisms of power loudly and confidently. The altered text, however, was less critical and was published under the headline: We Are Now Closer to Our Dream Than Ever Before.
David Bandurski, the China Media Project editor, said Mr Tuos in your face [and] offensive intervention had proved the final straw for many of the newspapers censorship-weary staff, who reportedly decided to go on strike on Sunday.
The newspapers journalists believed propaganda officials had broken a gentlemans code of how you do and dont control the media, Mr Bandurski added. If they dont push back what will be left of their paper?
The crisis escalated last Friday when journalists publically slammed Mr Tuos brutal, ignorant and catastrophic intervention.
Dozens of leading academics then followed suit, using an open letter to call on Guangdongs new party chief, Hu Chunhua, to sack Mr Tuo for his overbearing actions. He Weifang, a legal expert from Peking University and one of the letters signatories, said the incident was a challenge to the new central leadership. So far they have not displayed their stance on political reform. This time, public anger may well test the new leadership. On Monday, one week after the adulterated editorial was published, protestors took to the streets outside the newspapers Guangzhou HQ.
In an apparent allusion to the death of press freedom, several carried yellow chrysanthemums.
One protestor, Ah Qiang, told the Daily Telegraph the crisis was about more than newspapers.
This involves not just one media outlet - Southern Weekend - but everyone. It is everyones business. [It is about] everyones rights, he said.
Mr Bandurski, from the China Media Project, said the controversy now posed serious questions of the direction China was likely to move in under incoming president Xi Jinping.
It is not just a media story anymore. It is about what direction China is heading in, he said.
Ever since the 18th Communist Party Congress [Xi] has touted himself and the new top seven leaders as representing a new style of leadership and this has been pushed very heavily by the state media. But while media reports had painted Xi as a Spartan, no-nonsense and more open leader, the so-called New Years Greeting episode had led many to doubt that.
These are signs that look right now like steps backwards not steps forward, Mr Bandurski said.
Mr He, from Peking University, said it was too early to say if Mr Tuo would be sacked or what consequences the newspapers journalists might face.
But the central governments reaction would give an early indication of what ordinary Chinese could expect from their government over the coming decade, he added.
Shi Anbin, a professor of media studies from Beijings Tsinghua University, said the incident underlined the ever-growing tension between Chinese journalists and their government.
But the crisis, coming as Chinas new leadership took power, could provide an opportunity of initiating genuine press reform in China, he added.
So far Beijing has sought to play down the incident. There is no censorship of the media in China, a foreign affairs spokesman said last week.
Sorry, just seeing as I live in the US, Your view is absolutely outside of the stadium, to say nothing of the fact that it isn't only US media inside the US. 
