MCLC: Nanfang zhoumo supporters strike back

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Nanfang zhoumo supporters strike back
***********************************************************

Source: NYT 
(1/7/13):http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/world/asia/supporters-back-strik
e-at-newspaper-in-china.html

Supporters Back Strike at Newspaper in China
By EDWARD WONG 

BEIJING — Hundreds of people gathered outside the headquarters of a
newspaper office in southern China on Monday to show their support for
journalists who had declared a strike to protest what they called
overbearing censorship by provincial propaganda officials.

The journalists, who work for Southern Weekend, a relatively liberal
newspaper that has come under increasing pressure from officials in recent
years, also received support on the Internet from celebrities and
well-known commentators.

“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, cited a quotation by Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn, the Russian Nobel laureate and dissident: “One word of truth
outweighs the whole world.”

Many of the people who showed up Monday at the newspaper offices in
Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province, carried banners 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 the protesters without immediately taking any
harsh actions.

The angry journalists at Southern Weekend have been calling for the
removal of Tuo Zhen, the top propaganda official in Guangdong, whom the
journalists blame for overseeing a change in a New Year’s editorial that
ran last week and was supposed to have called for greater respect for
rights enshrined in the constitution under the headline “China’s Dream,
the Dream of Constitutionalism,” according to the China Media Project at
the University of Hong Kong. The editorial went through layers of changes
and ultimately became one praising the current political system, in which
the Communist Party exercises authority over all aspects of governance.

A well-known entrepreneur, Hung Huang, said on her microblog that the
actions of a local official 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.

One journalist for Southern Weekend said Monday afternoon that
negotiations between the various parties had been scheduled later in the
day, but there were no results from any talks as of Monday evening.

It was unclear how many employees in the newsroom had heeded the calls for
a strike. It appeared Sunday that many of Southern Weekend’s reporters had
declared themselves on strike. A local journalist who went by the
newspaper’s Beijing office on Monday said the building appeared to be open
but quiet. One employee told the journalist that the people there were not
on strike. Dozens of supporters showed up outside the building at various
times, some carrying signs and flowers.

The conflict was exacerbated Sunday night by top editors at the newspaper,
who posted a message on the publication’s official microblog saying that
the New Year’s editorial had been written with the consent of editors at
the newspaper.

According to an account from a newspaper employee posted online on Monday,
that statement was made after pressure was exerted on the top editors by
Yang Jian, the head of the party committee at Southern Media, the parent
company that runs Southern Weekend and other publications. Southern
Weekend’s editor in chief, Huang Can, then pressured an employee to give
up the official microblog password so the statement could be posted on the
microblog.

Neither Mr. Yang nor Mr. Huang could be reached for comment Monday.

Some political analysts have said the conflict raises questions about
whether the central government, led by Xi Jinping, the new party chief,
will support the idea of a more open media by moving to support the
protesting journalists. In his first trip outside Beijing, Mr. Xi traveled
to Guangdong and praised the market-oriented economic policies put in
place by Deng Xiaoping, the former supreme leader. But more recently, Mr.
Xi has said that China must respect its socialist roots.

Resolving the Southern Weekend tensions could also be a test for Hu
Chunhua, the new party chief in Guangdong and a potential candidate to
succeed Mr. Xi as the leader of China in a decade. Mr. Hu’s predecessor,
Wang Yang, was regarded by many Western political analysts as being a
“reformer,” but he presided over a tightening of media freedoms in the
province and specifically over Southern Media.

On Monday, People’s Daily, the party’s mouthpiece, ran a signed commentary
that referred to a recent meeting of propaganda officials in Beijing and
said propaganda officials should “follow the rhythm of the times” and help
the authorities establish a “pragmatic and open-minded image.” Some people
have interpreted that as support for officials in adopting a more
enlightened approach in dealing with the news media.

But Global Times, a populist newspaper, ran a scathing editorial that said
Southern Weekend was merely a newspaper and should not challenge the
system.

“Even in the West, mainstream media would not choose to openly pick a
fight with the government,” the editorial said. Xinhua, the state news
agency, published the editorial online.

Jonathan Ansfield contributed reporting. Mia Li and Shi Da and contributed
research.