China: Censorship Row Newspaper Published

By Mark Stone, China Correspondent, in Guangzhou

A Chinese newspaper at the centre of a strike over censorship has been published after journalists and Communist Party officials appeared to reach a tentative agreement.

A supporter chants slogans near the paper's offices as police look on

The Southern Weekly appeared as planned on newsstands in Beijing and Shanghai, though copies of the paper were not obviously available in its hometown, Guangzhou.

No mention of the three-day dispute could be found in the latest edition of the paper. Staff walked out on Monday in a rare strike, which quickly developed into an ideological debate over free speech in China.

A protester is taken away by plainclothes police officers and put in a van A CCTV camera outside the paper's offices

The newspaper's journalists had been angered after the local Communist Party propaganda chief ordered officials to change an editorial they had written.

The original version of the editorial had called on the incoming Chinese leadership to push through political reforms. The censored version was a simple plaudit for the Communist Party.

Supporters of the journalists gathered outside the newspaper's office in Guangzhou for three days this week.

With remarkably unusual defiance, the group called for the overthrow of the Communist Party and the installation of a free media and independent judiciary.

Police watched and photographed them but, unusually, no attempt was made to shut down the protest. Some of the protesters removed masks in front of police to prove they had no fear of being photographed.

Temporary CCTV cameras were installed on trees outside the offices. Some protesters said they feared they may be arrested in the coming days once the dispute has died down.

A protester covered in pages of the Southern Weekly

The details of the deal that allowed the paper to be published are not clear, though it is understood staff agreed their editor-in-chief would be fired and in return they would not be punished for their protest.

Staff have been ordered not to speak to foreign media but, according to the Associated Press, some of the journalists tried to insert an editorial into today's edition praising the paper as a tribute to reform. Managers ordered that it be removed.

If true, this either represents further censorship or perhaps an acknowledgement from newspaper's senior staff that they have already pushed the boundary just enough to focus government minds in Beijing.

The Southern Weekend is regarded as one of China's most respected newspapers. It has frequently challenged the status quo in a country where the media is under almost total control by the Communist Party.

The southern city of Guangzhou, where the paper has its headquarters, is regarded as one of the most progressive parts of China. It has, in the past, been used by the Communist Party to test possible free-speech reforms.

Protests of the kind seen here are unlikely to have been tolerated in Beijing, where senior government officials have remained silent over the issue.

The protest is a clear test for the incoming Communist Party leader Xi Jinping. Opinions are mixed over how much he will support political and economic reform.

A man reads the cover story of the Southern Weekly

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