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 |  Subject: Hundreds Support Journalists of Censored Chinese Newspaper  Mon Jan 07, 2013 8:11 pm | |
| Hundreds of people gathered outside the headquarters of a newspaper company in southern China on Monday, intensifying a battle over media censorship that poses a test of the willingness of China’s new leadership to tolerate calls for change. The demonstration was an outpouring of support for journalists at the relatively liberal Southern Weekend newspaper, who erupted in fury late last week over what they called overbearing interference by local propaganda officials. At the same time, the embattled newsroom received backing on the Internet from celebrities and other prominent commentators that turned what began as a local dispute into a broader national display of solidarity.
“Hoping for a spring in this harsh winter,” Li Bingbing, an actress, said to her 19 million followers on a microblog account. Yao Chen, an actress with more than 31 million followers, quoted Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the revered Russian dissident: “One word of truth outweighs the whole world.”
Disputes between media organizations and local party leaders over the limits of reporting and expressions of opinion are common in China, but they rarely emerge into public view. But this time calls to support the frustrated journalists spread quickly in Chinese online forums over the weekend, and those who showed up on Monday outside the media offices in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong, ran the gamut from high school and university students to retirees.
Many carried banners scrawled with slogans and white and yellow chrysanthemums, a flower that symbolizes mourning. One banner read: “Get rid of censorship. The Chinese people want freedom.” Police officers watched, but did not interfere.
The journalists at Southern Weekend have been calling for the ouster of Tuo Zhen, the top propaganda official in Guangdong Province, who took up his post last May. They blame him for overseeing a change in a New Year editorial that originally called for greater respect to rights enshrined in the Constitution under the headline of “China’s Dream, the Dream of Constitutionalism.”
The editorial went through layers of changes and ultimately became one praising the direction of the current political system, in which the Communist Party continues to exercise authority over all aspects of governance.
A well-known entrepreneur, Hung Huang, said online that the actions of Mr. Tuo had “destroyed, overnight, all the credibility the country’s top leadership had labored to re-establish since the 18th Party Congress,” the November gathering in Beijing that was the climax of the leadership transition installing Xi Jinping as Communist Party chief. Mr. Xi, who is also scheduled to assume the nation’s presidency in March, has raised expectations that he might pursue a more open-minded approach to molding China’s economic and political models during his planned decade-long tenure. But more recently, he has said China must respect its socialist roots, which appeared to be a move to placate conservatives in the party.
One journalist for Southern Weekend said Monday night that talks between the various parties had taken place that afternoon, but there were no results to announce. “The negotiations did not go well at all,” the journalist said in a telephone interview.
Signs had emerged earlier that central propaganda officials were moving to dismantle support for the protest. A fiery editorial by Global Times, a populist newspaper, attacked the rebels at Southern Weekend and essentially accused them of conspiring against the government. Xinhua, the state news agency, and other prominent news sites published the editorial online, presumably at the orders of propaganda officials.
“Propaganda is still on the old road,” said an editor at a party media organization.
It was unclear how many employees in the Southern Weekend newsroom had heeded calls by reporters for a strike to display their determination to resist censorship. A local journalist who went by the newspaper’s Beijing office on Monday said the building appeared to be open, but quiet. One employee at the site, where about 30 people work, told the journalist that the office was not on strike.
Around 2 a.m. on Tuesday, three women and two men in their 20s walked up to the front of the newspaper offices, on a deserted avenue, and took cellphone photos of one another holding up a handwritten cardboard sign that said, “Tuo Zhen, go home.” A policeman walked out of a nearby squad car and said something to them. The group left.
“Everyone in Guangdong Province knows Tuo Zhen is a bad guy,” said one of the men, who declined to give his name for security reasons.
Outspoken intellectuals have circulated an online petition demanding Mr. Tuo’s removal. Mr. Tuo could not be reached for comment on Monday.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/world/asia/supporters-back-strike-at-newspaper-in-china.html?_r=0 |
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