For the Telegraph, Malcolm Moore profiles a village newspaper near Shijiazhuang which has established itself as the opposition to the local official propaganda paper:
“We wanted to rebuke the lies of the official newspaper,” said He Jianguo, 44, a former pharmaceuticals salesman who has become one of the editors of the Voice of the People. “Because we have a saying here in China: if you repeat a lie 100 times, it becomes the truth.”
[…] “We want to tell the people that they have a voice. A paper is old-fashioned, but we are hoping the villagers who read it will then spread our information over the internet,” said Ms He.
The editors said the Communist party is aware of the paper, but so far has decided not to squash it.
“The province’s Propaganda department knows about us. They ask us not to publish at particularly sensitive times. But otherwise we are too small and we do not earn any money, so we are under their radar,” said Mr He. The village chief has never acknowledged the existence of the Voice of the People.
