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Published: Jan. 10, 2013 at 1:42 AM

BEIJING, Jan. 10 (UPI) -- The events set off by the anti-censorship protest by the staff of a Chinese newspaper may force China's new leaders toward political reforms, says an expert.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Minxin Pei, professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and a non-resident senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, said Chinese Communist Party authorities seem to have temporarily defused the mini-crisis brought on by the protest against the "ham-fisted censorship" at the Southern Weekly in Guangdong province.

Under a deal reached Wednesday to settle the censorship protest, whose details were not disclosed, authorities reportedly had allowed the highly popular Southern Weekend (also called Southern Weekly) to publish Thursday.

In return, journalists at the newspaper may have agreed not to publicly air their grievances about Tuo Zhen, propaganda head for Guangdong province, who had been accused of censorship. The journalists had threatened to strike over a New Year's editorial on political reform that was allegedly censored and rewritten by a local propaganda official.

The incident comes as the Chinese Communist party made its leadership transition at its congress last November, with the reform-minded Xi Jinping taking the helm, along with the six members of the powerful Politburo Standing committee.

Professor Pei wrote provincial party official have promised to relax some of the recently imposed censorship measures such as prior approval of reporting topics and examination of copy before publication and in return, the journalists would end their walkout.

"On the surface, this outcome may not seem worth celebrating," Pei wrote. "After all, the party did not meet a key demand of the protesting newspapermen: sacking the local propaganda chief who had allegedly eviscerated the newspaper's New Year editorial calling for constitutional rule in China."

Pei also warned local officials, despite the deal, may likely retaliate against the newspaper's editorial once the incident loses media spotlight.

"Nevertheless, the protest over censorship at Southern Weekly and the Party's modest concessions constitute an important development" since Xi became the new leader.

Originally posted here:
Censorship incident tests leadership

China's new Communist Party leaders want to appear more open, but they're not about to give up control of the media. That's the lesson of a dustup involving an influential newspaper whose staff briefly rebelled against especially heavy-handed censorship.

The staff of Southern Weekly returned to work after some controls were relaxed, but public demands for the ouster of the top censor were ignored. Some observers took solace in the fact that no journalists were punished at least not yet.

"The fact that no one is being immediately punished is a victory. That is not insignificant," said Steve Tsang, a China politics expert at the University of Nottingham in Britain. "It's a smart use of the party's power but it's not actually making any compromise in terms of the basic fundamental principles of the party staying fully in control on anything that really matters."

China's new leader, Xi Jinping, has raised reformist hopes and struck an especially populist note in vowing to tackle official corruption. In an early December speech he praised China's constitution and said people's rights must be respected, comments that helped set the stage for the censorship clash.

The constitution grants Chinese many rights, including freedom of speech and of the press, but it is often ignored. Many in China interpret the constitution as limiting the power of the ruling Communist Party.

AP

"No organization or individual has the special right to overstep the constitution and law, and any violation of the constitution and the law must be investigated," Xi said. Many media commentators viewed his remarks as an opportunity to push for the rule of law the party has long promised but failed to deliver.

The staff at the Southern Weekly newspaper in Guangzhou a southern city known for freewheeling commerce, political boldness and year-round flowers joined the fray with a New Year's editorial extolling adherence to the constitution as the new Chinese dream.

Journalists say the provincial censor morphed the item into a piece praising the party and did so without running it by the editorial department. That violated an unwritten rule in the way censorship normally is carried out.

For three days, hundreds of supporters gathered in front of the newspaper offices on sidewalks scented with osthmanthus blossoms to shout for greater press freedom and wave banners. One man wrapped himself in newspaper to show his solidarity. But the dispute also drew political conservatives who called the newspaper's journalists "traitors" and "running dogs."

Read this article:
Censorship Row Shows China's Tight Grip on Media

China Journalists On Strike Over Censorship
01/07/2013 A quite unprecedented event has hit the Chinese southern city of Guangzhou: Hundreds of people gathered outside the office of a liberal newspaper after a leading New Year article calling for more press freedom was deleted from the daily #39;s website. "We want press freedom, constitutionalism and democracy," read one of the banners at the protests outside the headquarters of Southern Weekly. Monday demonstration in the capital of Guangdong province was mostly reported via social networks. More: leaksource.wordpress.com twitter.com

By: LeakSourceNews

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China Journalists On Strike Over Censorship - Video

Southern Weekly has long been the most daring of Chinese publications, perhaps enjoying a lower level of scrutiny from Beijing due to its base in the city of Guangzhou, just north of Hong Kong.

The paper now finds itself, however, at the center of a battle over censorship in the country that is spinning wildly out of control. As The Atlantic's James Fallows notes, it could be a very important issue for China in 2013 or it could go nowhere, we don't really know yet.

The situation began over the New Year, when the newspaper staff prepared to publish an article titled "Chinas Dream, the Dream of Constitutionalism". The article, part of a yearly tradition, would this year openly call for reform in the country.

Between the editing and the publication, the core of the article was changed: the new title would be "We are closer than ever before to our dreams" and the article would have a very pro-government stance.

Staff at the newspaper were furious feeling that local propaganda boss Tuo Zhen had overstepped even China's strong censorship laws by editing the article after it was sent out to publication. Editors took to Weibo, China's popular microblogging service, to denounce the new article. An open letter was published on the service, accusing the censors of "raping" the newspaper's editorial judgement.

"We demand an investigation into the incident, which has seen proper editorial procedure severely violated and a major factual error printed," the open letter said, according to Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (the letter has since been deleted from Weibo).

Two subsequent open letters were posted online, the second of which was signed and openly called for strikes.

By January 7th, the newspaper's staff were in the street protesting something unheard of at a major newspaper for over two decades, SCMP reports. Protests spread amongst universities in Guangzhou and Nanjing. Perhaps the best indication of the issue's spread is the fact that Weibo's most popular user, actress Yao Chen, posted a message in support of the strikes to her 31 million followers. "One word of truth outweighs the whole world," she said, quoting Soviet-era Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Yao's words show how far a relatively wonky debate over censorship had gone in China.

"When a Chinese ingnue, beloved for her comedy, doe-eyed looks, and middle-class charm, istweetingher fans the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, we may be seeing a new relationship between technology, politics, and Chinese prosperity," Evan Osnos of the New Yorker observed this week.

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A Chinese Censorship Scandal Is Spiraling Out Of Control

GUANGZHOU, China (AP) Communist Party-backed management and rebellious editors at an influential weekly newspaper have defused a high-profile standoff over censorship that turned into a test of the new Chinese leadership's tolerance for political reform.

Under an agreement reached Tuesday, editors and reporters at the Southern Weekly will not be punished for protesting and stopping work in anger over a propaganda official's heavy-handed rewriting of a New Year's editorial last week, according to two members of the editorial staff. One, an editor, said propaganda officials will no longer directly censor content prior to publication.

The staff members asked not to be identified because they feared retaliation after they and other employees were told not to speak to foreign media. Executives at the newspaper and its parent company, the state-owned Nanfang Media Group, declined comment other than to say the Southern Weekly would publish as normal Thursday.

Aside from getting the presses rolling, the agreement appears likely to deflate the confrontation that presented a knotty challenge to Chinese leader Xi Jinping two months after taking office. While the crisis began over the propaganda official's rewriting of the editorial calling for better constitutional governance to include praise for the party, it soon evolved into calls for free expression and political reform.

Expressions of support for the newspaper poured across the Internet and, for two days this week, protesters came by the hundreds to the gates of the compound housing the Southern Weekly. On Tuesday, supporters of the newspaper squared off against flag-waving Communist Party loyalists near the compound off a busy street in Guangzhou, one of China's richest and most commercially vibrant cities.

Some 30 uniformed police officers stood guard outside the compound, as a handful of protesters showed up for a third day Wednesday, renewing calls for press freedom.

Defusing the crisis took the intervention of Hu Chunhua, the newly installed party chief of Guangdong, the province where Guangzhou is located, according to an editorial staff member and an academic in Beijing, who asked not to be named because officials at his university ordered him not to speak with the media.

The agreement to keep propaganda officials from censoring articles before they appear rolls back more intrusive controls put in place in recent months, but does not mean an end to censorship. The Propaganda Department, which controls all media in China, relies on directives, self-censorship by editors and reporters and firings of those who do not comply to enforce the party line.

The Southern Weekly editor said it was hard to call the agreement a victory because controls still remain in place and punishments, though forestalled for now, may be imposed later.

Management refused to yield to one demand: that this week's editions include an explanation of the dispute, the editor and a colleague said.

Original post:
Management, reporters defuse China censorship row