In China, an Editor Triumphs, and Fails

Still, they tried to pressure the newspaper. On the day the story of Sun's death was published, Guangzhou's party secretary angrily threatened to take the Daily to court, journalists said. Later, Cheng received a call from an old classmate who delivered a message from another senior city official warning him to back off, colleagues said.

Soon after Beijing abolished the detention law, Guangzhou party leaders ordered an investigation into the newspaper's finances and investigators began pressuring advertisers for evidence of corruption, party officials and advertisers said.

"They couldn't use the propaganda system to punish the newspaper because it hadn't made any serious mistakes," said one provincial party official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "So they turned to the justice system."

Within a month, prosecutors detained Yu Huafeng, the paper's general manager, and questioned him about a $350 necklace an advertiser had given his wife as a gift after she had a child. Yu replied that he had given the advertiser a $1,000 video camera when his wife had a child, and he showed them the receipt to prove it, according to his wife, Xiang Li.

The authorities refused to release Yu. But Cheng mobilized his own supporters in the party, and the provincial propaganda chief intervened and forced the prosecutors to let Yu go, two party officials said.

The showdown suggested the Daily had more support in the party than its enemies, and Cheng and Yu relaxed, colleagues said. They made plans to launch tabloids like the Daily in other cities, and opened talks with another newspaper to join forces and start one in Beijing.

In mid-October, in what appeared to be an important endorsement, the party's central propaganda department in Beijing approved the newspaper. Cheng was named the new paper's editor in chief.

Clampdown Intensifies

But Cheng had underestimated his enemies in Guangzhou. A year earlier, the party's top official in Guangdong province had departed. His replacement was Zhang Dejiang, a party leader who soon complained that reporters in Guangdong were too difficult to control, according to people who heard his remarks.

It was Zhang who had ordered the March clampdown in which Cheng was demoted to deputy editor, party officials said. He had also fired the editor of another paper and completely shut down a third.

In December 2003, city leaders won permission from Zhang or his deputies to continue the corruption probe of the Southern Metropolis Daily, according to two party officials. Prosecutors detained Yu again, and this time he was not released.

But Cheng refused to tone down the paper's coverage. Ten days after Yu's arrest, the Daily reported a world exclusive: Health authorities in the city had identified a suspected case of SARS, the first in China in several months.

The next day, the city confirmed the report and said it had been planning to make the announcement all along. Zhang was embarrassed and furious, a party official said, but because of the government's failed cover-up of the first SARS outbreak, it would have been difficult for him to punish the newspaper for the disclosure.

Instead, the corruption probe intensified. In early January 2004, prosecutors interrogated about 20 editors and business managers at the newspaper, including Cheng.

But even as the pressure grew, the Daily won some of the nation's top journalism honors and announced that circulation had topped 1.4 million and 2003 profits would approach $20 million, making it one of the country's most successful papers.