Jailed Chinese Journalist Is Freed Early

SHANGHAI, China -- A journalist serving a 13-year jail term for reporting about a bogus irrigation project has been released five years early to unusually vocal official acclaim for his determination to fight corruption.

Gao Qinrong, previously an investigative journalist for a state-run newspaper in northern China's Shanxi province, was imprisoned in 1998 and released earlier this month, according to media activists and state news reports.

Such developments rarely win a mention in China's state-controlled media, given the political sensitivities over Beijing's violations of freedom of press and other civil liberties.

Yet, Gao's case is being touted as evidence of the country's willingness to empower the media to help fight corruption.

"That the local reporter Gao Qinrong was framed and imprisoned after revealing the frightful spectacle of local corruption is a highly irregular situation," the state-run newspaper Southern Weekend said in a commentary accompanying a lengthy interview with Gao after his release.

"Why should media today have to face this problem or that problem when reporting on the problem of corruption?" it said. Gao, 51, was not immediately available for comment Wednesday.

In the interview, he insisted he was right in publishing the reports that resulted in his imprisonment.

"To be a journalist, you have to speak for the people," Gao told the Southern Weekend. "If I hadn't published that report, it would be as if the case never happened. We can't all be yes-men, if we are, what hope is there for our country?"

"Corruption must be exposed," he said.

The authorities' motives in highlighting Gao's case are unclear.

"His release is hardly a sign of reform or of relaxation, if anyone is suggesting such," said Arnold Zeitlin, a media consultant who teaches journalism in China. "After all, the state took away eight years of his life on trumped-up charges, on which so many others still are jailed."

Gao drew national attention with a 1998 report in the Shanxi Youth Daily that a $35 million irrigation project in Yuncheng, a city in northern China, was a scam meant to boost the careers of local officials. It was published in the Communist Party newspaper the People's Daily and followed on state-run television.