In China, an Editor Triumphs, and Fails

Struggle Between New Press Freedoms, Communist Party Evident by Jailing

GUANGZHOU, China -- It was past 9:30 p.m. when the reporters finished writing. The presses were scheduled to begin printing the next day's issue of the Southern Metropolis Daily in a few hours, and space for a large headline had been reserved on the front page.

But when the night editor read their story -- an investigative report about a young college graduate who had been detained by local police and beaten to death in custody -- he hesitated. Then he picked up a phone and called Cheng Yizhong, the paper's star editor.

Cheng had built the Daily into this southern city's most popular and profitable tabloid, practicing a feisty brand of journalism editors across China were trying to imitate. But a few days earlier, in a clampdown ordered by a new Communist Party leader in the province, he had been stripped of his title as editor in chief. He was now running the paper as deputy editor.

Others in the newsroom had briefed him twice about the article, but given the circumstances, the night editor wanted to check with him one last time, colleagues recalled. The story was certain to anger government officials, and there was still time to pull it. Instead, Cheng gave the order to publish.

The article, published April 25, 2003, spread quickly on the Internet, and newspapers across the country reprinted it. Reporters dug deeper, exposing abuses in a nationwide network of detention camps that purchased and sold inmates like slaves. Put on the defensive by rising public outrage, Beijing ordered the camps closed and abolished a decades-old law that gave police sweeping powers to imprison people at will.

It was a landmark victory for the Chinese press; never before had reporters influenced national policy in such a dramatic fashion. But in March, Cheng was arrested and two of his colleagues were sentenced to long prison terms in a corruption probe that party sources said was an act of retaliation by local officials.

What happened to Cheng highlights a momentous and complex struggle now underway between the country's increasingly independent-minded and profit-driven state media and entrenched interests inside the ruling Communist Party. The outcome could determine the future not only of journalism in China but also of the largest authoritarian political system in the world.

More than a quarter century after China launched economic reforms while continuing to restrict political freedom, the government still owns and controls all of the country's newspapers and television stations. But journalists have fought off party censors in one sensitive subject area after another, and they are waging a daily battle for even greater freedoms.

This push is driven in part by economics. In a sweeping industry overhaul, the government is withdrawing subsidies from state media outlets, holding them responsible for their own profits and losses and opening the door to private investment. The market has led newspapers to set aside propaganda and deliver stories that readers are actually interested in. Many have turned to gossip or entertainment, but there is also a financial incentive to produce a scarce commodity: journalism that challenges the government.

The party is torn about this creeping expansion of media freedoms. It believes a more assertive press can help it fight corruption and improve governance, but is afraid of losing control over an institution critical to its monopoly on power. Regular skirmishing between journalists and officials who want to suppress stories that make them look bad has threatened the party's unity. And as journalists begin to view themselves as watchdogs for the public rather than lap dogs for the party, the government's old methods of control are weakening.

New Journalism

On Sept. 1, 1997, readers who picked up the Southern Metropolis Daily found a different kind of Communist Party newspaper. Instead of the latest pronouncements on Marxism, a quarter of the paper's 16 pages were devoted to the death of Princess Diana. The tabloid stunned its rivals; almost every newspaper in China had covered Diana's death with only a few hundred words.

The tabloid was an experiment launched by a staid party newspaper, the Southern Daily, to grab more advertising in this booming city of 7 million.

Cheng was not yet 30, the youngest member of a three-man committee appointed to set up the paper. He was a party member and a rising star, a peasant's son who landed a job with the Southern Daily after studying literature at Guangzhou's most prestigious university. He had already distinguished himself as a creative editor, so when he volunteered to help start the tabloid, he was named deputy editor.

"It meant more pressure and more work, but he asked to do it," recalled his wife, Chen Junying, a fellow editor at the Southern Daily. "He wanted work that was more honest, and more competitive, and of greater significance."