China outcry grows over beating death of reporter

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese police are investigating the death of a reporter beaten up while probing the country's deadly coal mines, media reported on Wednesday amid a growing outcry.

Lan Chengzhang, who worked for the China Trade News, died of an apparent brain hemorrhage on January 10 after he was beaten while visiting a mine in Hunyuan county in the northern province of Shanxi, an editor with the paper told Reuters.

"That's what we've heard, but the local authorities haven't given us an official explanation yet," said the editor, Wang Jianfeng.

Communist Party censors strictly control the Chinese press, but even state-controlled media have seized on Lan's death, raising questions about local officials' conduct, Lan's motives, and the rights of the country's beleaguered reporters.

"For a reporter to be beaten to death is undoubtedly a major event in a world that venerates democracy and freedom of information," said a comment on the Web site of the Southern Daily (www.southerncn.com).

"Any country that even slightly values citizens' right to know and freedom of the press would actively and appropriately investigate and deal with this case."

Shanxi officials have said Lan was not an accredited reporter and suggested that he might have been seeking payoffs in return for not reporting problems at the mine, the China Youth Daily said.

But the Trade News editor-in-chief said Lan was "certainly a real reporter" and Chinese newspapers said Lan's lack of official approval was no excuse to beat him.

"I don't know whether Lan Chengzhang was reporting or blackmailing, but it is ignorant and disgraceful to absolve thugs of responsibility by citing blackmail," commented the Southern Metropolitan Daily, a tabloid based in Guangzhou, on Wednesday.

The Trade News' chief reporter in Shanxi, who gave his surname as Chang, said editors from the paper and officials from China's official journalists association were now there investigating Lan's death.

"We take the issue seriously, and after we got the information, we sent staff to investigate," Li Cunhou, the Communist Party secretary of the association, told Reuters.

"If it concerned a real journalist, we will protect his rights and deal with the issue severely."