Is China getting fed up with censorship? That’s the question people are starting to ask following a dramatic weekend showdown over press independence—still very much ongoing—between China’s official propaganda apparatus and reporters at Guangdong’s freewheeling investigative newspaper Southern Weekly.
The free-speech fracas—some staff at the paper have said they will go on strike (unspecified what that means) over government interference—has spawned heated criticism on the Chinese Net of Beijing’s media controls. And it has some wondering whether the new leadership under Party Secretary Xi Jinping might take a more liberal attitude toward journalistic independence.
