Published: January 7, 2004

(Clearwisdom.net) BEIJING, Jan. 7 -- The police stormed the offices of one of China's feistiest newspapers and detained the top editor and six other officials in what many journalists regard as retribution for aggressive reporting on a recent SARS case, employees said today.

The crackdown on the newspaper, Southern Metropolis Daily, came soon after it became the first news media outlet to report on the fresh outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in Guangzhou, the paper's hometown. The paper's investigation late last month prompted authorities to confirm that China had its first suspected case of SARS since the epidemic petered out last summer.

Southern Metropolis Daily also came under heavy political pressure last spring when it exposed the beating death of a migrant worker in police custody, a case that eventually prompted the central government to abolish longstanding rules that allowed the police to detain migrants at will.

Employees at the newspaper, part of the state-owned Nanfang Daily Press Group, said they were told that Cheng Yizhong, the chief editor, and six other executives of the paper's business department were detained on Tuesday and held for questioning on suspicion of financial crimes. Mr. Cheng was released early this morning, these people said. There was no immediate word on the status of the others who were held. The police declined to comment.

Authorities often investigate financial crimes at major state-owned companies only when political leaders have decided to punish people they consider disobedient or threatening. Employees said they interpreted the daytime detention of Mr. Cheng as a clear signal that the newspaper had exceeded the tight boundaries of press freedom and offended provincial officials.

Journalists say that efforts to curtail aggressive reporting at the paper may be part of a broader national clampdown on the press that has taken place in recent months.

President Hu Jintao, who became China's top state and Communist Party leader last year, was initially seen as tolerating more press freedom than his predecessor, Jiang Zemin.

Reporters and editors were enthusiastic about relative openness in the wake of last year's SARS epidemic, when top officials acknowledged that the cover-up of SARS and restrictions on news media reporting may have contributed to the rapid spread of the disease.

But in recent months propaganda officials have been forbidding discussion of a range of sensitive issues, such as political reform, and some media experts say the pendulum has swung back toward a period of repression.

Guangdong, a southern commercial center that was once seen as a haven for aggressive news organizations, has been in the forefront of the crackdown.

Two other publications of the Nanfang Daily Press Group, the weekly magazine Southern Weekend and the daily 21st Century World Herald, were widely read around China for their reports on the growing wealth gap, environmental problems and high-level financial crimes. But both were severely censured last year for publishing articles that crossed political boundaries. The 21st Century World Herald was later shut down.

Southern Metropolis Daily earned a national reputation for tough reporting last spring, when it uncovered the beating death in police custody of Sun Zhigang, a college graduate who had traveled to Guangdong to find work. A court case that followed exposed widespread police abuses but also put the newspaper on shaky political ground, reporters said.

The paper appears to have further alienated local authorities by its coverage of SARS.

A medical reporter there learned that a 32-year-old freelance television producer was being treated as a suspected SARS case in a Guangzhou hospital in late December even though there had been no public announcement, reporters said. It was only after the paper's editors made clear that they intended to publish the report, the reporters said, that the authorities announced that they had a suspected SARS case.

Earlier this week, the case was confirmed as China's first and so far its only case of SARS since last summer. Authorities have not explained the delay in announcing the suspected case. Health officials said that early tests in the case had proven inconclusive, though China has pledged to report on suspected as well as confirmed cases.

The World Health Organization has praised China's cooperation in dealing with SARS since the latest outbreak.

But journalists in Guangdong and around the country say that propaganda officials are strictly limiting coverage of the disease to official statements and strongly discouraging the news media from reporting widely on the topic.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/07/international/asia/07CND-CHIN.html