Xie Baokang, assistant to the Times’ editor, told Agence France-Presse that the investigative department had been “dismantled.” Reporters from the team, including the veteran journalist Wang Keqin, have been moved to different departments, Xie told AFP.

The reasons for the move are not clear, but the lack of transparency surrounding the restructuring is characteristic of the behind-the-scenes political pressure that governs China’s media. Journalists are often fined, dismissed, or demoted in retaliation for outspoken reporting and warned not to publicize the penalty, according to CPJ research.

“This apparent crackdown of the China Economic Times’ investigative section is a loss for China,” said Bob Dietz, CPJ Asia program coordinator. “The shutdown carries the hallmarks of a political measure to curb a leading news outlet’s reporting that found disfavor within the government.”

From Jonathan Watts at The Guardian:

Contacted by phone, Wang said he was unable to comment. “Sorry, I have to hang up,” he said ….

“I had problems with black society [gangs], and problems with red society [officials],” Wang said in a Guardian interview last year. “I heard there was a special investigation team, [with the target of] sending me to prison.” He said his life had been threatened and he had been beaten up on several occasions.

Until now, however, it was assumed that his position was safe because he was protected by China’s former premier Zhu Rongji. There is little indication of what may have sparked a bout of pressure from the authorities. At midnight and from 5am to 9am, Wang posted a series of online comments calling for freedom and condemning the corruption of officials.

“Thanks for your support … Even if we can only change society a little, that is still progress,” he wrote in one. “Respect everyone’s freedom in order to achieve true freedom,” he noted in another. “Who but a corrupt man would want to become a governor?” read another.

At Economics Observer [zh], journalism professor Zhan Jiang expressed optimism for Wang’s prospects and those of Chinese investigative journalism in general. China Media Project translates:

As I wrote on my microblog, the breakup of Wang Keqin’s investigative team is not something intended by the high-level leadership. It should be understood as the intention of a handful of ignorant and incompetent people at the top of the newspaper. High-level leaders have voiced approval of the work Wang Keqin has done in recent years to uphold the public interest. They have at the very least not singled him out for trouble. Wang Keqin has worked as an investigative reporter in Beijing for more than 10 years now, and from his seminal work on taxi cartels in Beijing to today he has never been targeted with a libel suit, and the factual nature of his reporting has never been questioned.

Reporters have called to ask me about the state of investigative reporting in China and the predicament it faces. I respond that we should avoid this word “predicament.” And for this reason, I encourage against reading too much into this latest development, understanding it as necessarily a reflection of the worsening state of investigative reporting, or a sign that forces outside the paper have agitated against Wang Keqin. This should not in fact be the case. We should recognize that we’ve lately seen an upsurge in investigative reporting in many media, in financial media and commercial newspapers, and even at China Central Television, including such recent cases as tainted pork in China, and just this month revelations of counterfeit products by DaVinci furniture ….

When friends say that being a journalist is a dangerous road, I respond that, given the chance, I will still choose to be a journalist in the next life. Because Wang Keqin and others like him have made China a more transparent place, and they have transformed the values of our people. In a significant sense, they have taken us from a culture of propaganda and exultation (歌颂型文化) to a culture of criticism (批判性文化). Therefore, I suspect that the changes Wang Keqin is now experiencing might bring him an opportunity for fairer pay and greater comfort. If that’s the case, then I suppose we have Chairman Hang to thank.

Only a week ago, Wang himself wrote [zh] that, while the fortunes of investigative journalism have followed “the wave-like pattern of the ‘camel’s hump’”, the trends are generally positive. From China Media Project:

… [From] the standpoint of professionalism, the first true investigative reports in China perhaps have a history of just a decade. I believe we can date them back to the launch of Caijing magazine [by Hu Shuli (胡舒立)] in 1998. Along with the China Central Television program News Probe, which was launched around the same time and also exposed deeper stories, Caijing defined investigative reporting on the basis of “defending the public interest” (捍卫公众利益), “exposing the truth” (揭发黑幕), and “independent investigation by reporters” (记者独立调查), these three core characteristics, choosing its topics on this basis. News Probe in particular at the time defined the exposure of hidden truths (揭发黑幕) as a necessary component. This was the most basic expectation [of the program] ….

Making a broader observation, strictly-defined Chinese investigative reporting has shown the following trends over its history of just over ten years: 1. more and more reporters have been engaged in the writing of exposes (揭黑报道); 2. more and more media have been engaged in the publishing of exposes; 3. more and more good-quality reports and regular columns [on investigative reporting] have appeared in China; 4. investigative reports in China are showing a higher and higher degree of professionalism; 5. investigative reporters are receiving increasing attention and respect by general society.

See also past coverage of Wang Keqin on CDT.

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Post tags: Caijing, CCTV, Committee to Protect Journalists, counterfeit goods, Hu Shuli, investigative journalism, journalists in china, newspapers, pork, tainted food, Wang Keqin, Zhu Rongji
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Hu Shuli, a prominent Chinese editor who co-founded the independent news organization, said the company on Friday will start distributing English-language Caixin Weekly in Hong Kong through subscriptions and on newsstands. Caixin also is talking to Hong Kong publisher SCMP Group Ltd. about distributing the magazine with weekend editions of the South China Morning Post, although the companies said no deal has been finalized.

Caixin, which means finance news, also will start an English iPad app “in a few weeks” to target readers in the Americas and Europe, Ms. Hu said in an interview ….

Ms. Hu started Caixin Media in late 2009 after splitting with the publishers of her former magazine, Caijing. In more than a decade editing that publication, she gained a reputation as one of China’s most aggressive muckrakers and was credited for bringing Caijing to national and international prominence with articles about corruption and a government cover-up of the SARS pandemic in 2003.

Flagship Caixin Century has a circulation of 220,000, primarily in China. In its 17-month run so far, the Chinese-language magazine has run articles about the forced demolition of Chinese villages for government projects and about alleged abuses of monopoly power by state-owned Chinese companies. The Wall Street Journal Asia occasionally publishes articles from Caixin.

See also: Caixin’s English-language website and Caixin articles previously featured on CDT.

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Post tags: Caijing, forced demolition, Hong Kong, Hu Shuli, IPad, monopoly, news media, SARS, South China Morning Post
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Family and colleagues have been unable to reach Caijing magazine journalist Zhang Jialong since the evening of April 28, according to Radio France Internationale. He was believed to have gone for a “talk” with Beijing police, but no notice of formal detention has been issued, RFI reported. Interrogations are informally referred to as “chatting” or “drinking tea” with police or security officials. The Global Post website posted a link to an online missing notice issued by Zhang’s family. Zhang, a 23-year-old intern, had reported on a contaminated milk activist, Zhao Lianhai, and on Ai, the notice said. Zhang had also actively discussed recent detentions on his Twitter account, according to RFI.

Freelance journalist and documentary filmmaker Wen Tao has been missing and believed detained since April 3, when he was taken away by officials in plainclothes shortly after Ai. Wen, a former Global Times journalist and also an active Twitter user, had been documenting Ai’s work; his whereabouts and legal status are unknown, according to international news reports.

“The disappearance of two journalists who were reporting on Ai Weiwei and other Chinese activists is deeply concerning,” said CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney. “We fear they are the latest victims of the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to stifle the flow of independent information.”

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Post tags: Caijing, Committee to Protect Journalists, detention, drinking tea, Global Times, journalists, Wen Tao, Zhao Lianhai
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The Caijing report alleges that Li Wei (李薇) used her relationship with her husband, a former tobacco official, to get close to top officials in Yunnan, Guangdong, Beijing and Qingdao, creating a vast network of protection and favor that she used to personally enrich herself.

The report’s title, “The Public Band”, or gonggong qundai (公共裙带)), references the intersection of money and power, or “crony capitalism,” which in Chinese can be literally translated “skirt-band capitalism,” or qundai ziben zhuyi (裙带资本主义).

According to the article, many high-level officials now being held in Beijing’s Qincheng Prison — including former Yunnan governor Li Jiating (李嘉廷), former Beijing deputy mayor Liu Zhihua (刘志华), former deputy judge of the Supreme People’s Court Huang Songyou (黄松有), and former deputy chief of the China Development Bank Wang Yi (王益) — all had previous dealings with Li Wei’s network of power and money.

The report also mentions, withholding names, two high-level state officials who previously supported Li Wei. As a matter of general practice in China’s media, the withholding of the names of “high-level officials” in news reports indicates those concerned are officials at the most senior levels.

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Post tags: Caijing, high-level corruption, investigative journalism
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He confirmed by telephone with Sina.com.cn that he is leaving Caijing magazine, already is recruiting for staff members and plans to begin publishing the new monthly magazine in June.

“We are preparing for a magazine which has a strong background and capital strength,” He wrote on his micro blog.

“We hope people with a sense of mission, imagination and who love reading can join us. Writing skills, educational background and English are basic requirements, and the treatment will be, without a doubt, first class,” he wrote.

He hopes that this opportunity can be a new beginning in his life, the website reported.

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Post tags: Caijing
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Hu Shuli’s resignation from Caijing in late 2009 after a dispute with the magazine’s owner over editorial control was rued by many journalists as a sign of China’s worsening press environment, where political pressures squeeze media from the top while commercial interests squeeze them from beneath. And there were concerns too, as Hu Shuli walked off with the core members of her professional editorial staff at Caijing to pilot a new magazine, New Century News, that this spelled the end of Caijing as a leader in professional journalism.

Caijing has fared rather well, however, under the leadership of a new team of top editors, including CMP fellow Jin Liping (靳丽萍).

One of the strengths of Hu Shuli’s Caijing was its ability to report on public health issues (like the 2003 SARS epidemic) and disasters (like the 2008 Sichuan earthquake), and the magazine’s coverage of disastrous mudslides in Zhouqu, Gansu Province, is an encouraging sign that it has not lost touch with this tradition.

Hopefully, Caijing’s coverage will serve as an example to other media in China to raise their professional game.

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Post tags: Caijing, media conditions, press freedom, Zhouqu landslide
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Fang Xuanchang was walking home at about 10:40 pm and suddenly felt a blow to his back, near the intersection by Zengguang Lu and Shoutinan Lu. He was then beaten about his back and head. He turned over and saw two men brandishing iron bars, the Beijing News reported.

The two men were both about 1.6 meters tall and well built, Fang told police. Fang tried to communicate with the men during the beating, but they ignored him. In the end, Fang was forced to try to shield himself from the blows before the men finally retreated.

…Fang said he believed the attackers were trying to kill him. “It is abominable behavior to attack a journalist. But investigative reporters should always be prepared for this,” Fang told the Beijing Times.

Ganjiakou police station officers in Haidian district have started investigations but the two men remain at large.

On his blog, Evan Osnos published Fang’s firsthand account of the attack:

The entire incident lasted about four minutes. The next day, by examining the bloodstains on the street, I remembered that there were five or six rounds of attacks, leaving huge blood stains around those areas. There was blood tracked over fifty metres. When I was being attacked, there were many people watching, but the attackers didn’t have to care because, perhaps according to their experience, no one would stand up and help. No one would even dare to call the police. Based on all of this evidence, the two attackers were probably experienced professionals. Their intention was to kill me on the spot, or leave me bleed to death by preventing me from getting to the hospital.

…This is has been a shock to Chinese journalists. At first, I worried about whether or not should I inform my fellow journalists, because it might have a negative impact on their future reporting. Some of the journalists might not want to be a whistleblower, to expose the truth, if their personal safety is at stake. However, if this type of thing goes unnoticed and un-discussed, China will have even less chance to build a system that can protect its journalists from future tragedy.

Read more about violence against journalists in China, via CDT.

Update: Foreign Policy has more about the muckraking science journalism community that Fang was a part of:

Why would someone try to kill Fang Xuanchang? No one knows, or even seems to care. The attackers remain at large, despite an ongoing police investigation and Caijing’s best efforts to cooperate with the police and involve the All-China Journalists Association. The attack was covered in brief in Beijing-based newspapers, including a brief editorial in a state-run newspaper arguing that journalists shouldn’t be attacked. But no one in the Chinese media has gotten into the question of who would attack Fang — and more importantly, why exactly Fang might have been attacked.

For Fang’s colleagues, however, the message is clear: Reporting on controversial topics, as Fang has done, is unsafe. Journalists who are abused don’t necessarily find out who has attacked them or why, but the message sent to their friends and colleagues is clear: Don’t go there, or you could be next. It has a chilling effect on a wide circle of people. In the case of science journalism, the financial and political stakes are increasingly high, and the personal risks might be increasingly high as well.

Fang is one of the leading figures among China’s scientific muckrakers — a scourge of academic and government-sponsored pseudoscience and a critic of public and private quackery. For more than 10 years as a journalist, editor, and blogger on the influential (although frequently blocked) Chinese watchdog website New Threads, Fang has taken on academics listing faked awards and publishing plagiarized papers; hawkers of herbal cancer “cures,” such as Wang Zhenguo, peddler of the Tian Xian herbal cancer treatment; and Chinese scientists who claim to predict earthquakes, among other targets. But paranoia and anger, even violence, mark some recent responses to Fang’s work.

For more about New Threads and its work read this article from the South China Morning Post reposted on China’s Scientific & Academic Integrity Watch (first published in January).

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Post tags: Caijing, Fang Xuanchang, media conditions, press freedom, violence against journalists
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The 300-desk Caijing editorial department on the 19th floor of [Beijing’s] Prime Tower could have been considered the most modern news bureau in the country, but now it’s just an empty office. Over the past week, the editors and reporters who stayed on only occupied a small corner of the big office. The current team of less than 20 people had to finish the work that was formerly done by 200. They worked very hard to get this issue to you — our most-respected readers. Right now, sitting among these hardworking colleagues, It’s very clear to me, this issue won’t be satisfactory enough for you.

Overnight, an editorial team that took 12 years to put together up and left. It was this team that achieved a leading position in the industry, and turned Caijing magazine into a top brand. Ms. Hu Shuli, the representative figure of this team, also won applause from both our readers and public, thanks to her sharp personality and her commitment to ideals. I deeply regret the separation from a partner of so many years.

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Post tags: Caijing, Hu Shuli, media conditions
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As could perhaps be expected, media outside China have leapt directly to speculation about the political factors behind Caijing’s troubles. Some have positioned this as yet another story about a media crackdown in China.

But things are not so simple.

Anyone who has observed the ups and downs of Chinese media over the past decade will recognize that Caijing’s troubles are very different in nature from explicit official moves in the past against such publications as Southern Weekend, Southern Metropolis Daily, and Freezing Point.

Based on what we know thus far, the Caijing affair arose primarily out of a row over ownership and interests between the editorial team led by Hu Shuli and the magazine’s bosses at the HK-listed SEEC Media, led by Wang Boming.

Beyond that, we are far from knowing the full story behind the upheaval at Caijing. But we can safely suppose – this is China, after all – that the story is a complicated knot of factors. It is about politics, yes. But it is also about profit, about dollars and cents. And further, it is about varying visions of how media reform in China should proceed.

And from Osnos, who wrote a lengthy profile of Hu for his magazine in July:

The young reporter, who covers mostly politics for a Chinese magazine, said that one way to gauge how Hu’s resignation is being interpreted by the broader community of Chinese journalists is to consider the fact that when she resigned, she did not announce it to a large group of employees, but only to her deputies. Yet, as word spread, scores of other employees resigned as well. She did not call for an exodus, it seems, but the fact of her departure was enough to trigger it. I can’t vouch for the details, but, if true, it’s a measure not only of Hu’s personal following, but also of how much Chinese journalists aspire to do the kind of work she inspired.

“How is the resignation being interpreted in the West?” the reporter asked me. I said the audience that pays attention to this kind of thing is finite, but interested, and that people are concerned that it will set back progress toward professionalism and internationalization in the Chinese media. He agreed that it probably would. I’ve known him since he got out of college and watched him take on increasingly creative and challenging pieces. As we talked, he surprised me: “Who knows? Maybe in five years we’ll look back on this and it will have been for the better,” he said of Hu’s departure. “She could end up establishing a new magazine with the same standards and energy” and none of the baggage from so many years of tension with the executives who once had to run interference for her with the government. I told him that I had not expected him to see reason for optimism. He shrugged. “What choice do I have?”

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Post tags: Caijing, Hu Shuli, media conditions, press freedom
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Yesterday, He Li, the former editor in chief of China Business Weekly and one of the founding editors of The Economic Observer, confirmed that he had quit his current job but refused to provide further details to reporters from Sina Finance.

However, despite his reticence, Sina is reporting that he will indeed take up the position of editor in chief at Caijing.

The 47 year-old He once worked alongside Hu Shuli at China Business Times, the first privately-invested newspaper to be published in the People’s Republic of China. He worked there from 1989 to 2000, while Hu headed up the paper’s international department from 1992 to 1998.

He left the paper to help establish The Economic Observer in 2001, we he served as editor in chief and then president from 2001 to 2005.

Besides He, Zhao Li, another founding member of The Economic Observer, is also reported to have been appointed to Caijing’s new editorial board.

See also the Committee to Protect Journalists’ summary of recent events at Caijing.

Update: The Wall Street Journal has more details about Hu’s departure from Caijing which they gleaned from listening to the tapes of a recent staff meeting:

Now, details about the exodus are emerging from staff meetings, helping to explain the falling out between Ms. Hu and Wang Boming, the head of SEEC, the company that owns Caijing. Ms. Hu and Mr. Wang had founded the magazine together in 1998. The upheaval is being closely watched here and abroad, given the magazine’s ability to generate income and its willingness to push the limits of Chinese censors by publishing hard-hitting commentaries and investigative articles.

The differing accounts of the situation were reflected during staff meetings Tuesday and Wednesday, according to people present. Mr. Wang and other SEEC managers talked to the employees Tuesday, with Mr. Wang saying that the issue wasn’t philosophical differences with Ms. Hu.

[...] Mr. Wang was followed by Zhang Zhifang, a member of SEEC’s board… Mr. Zhang also said Ms. Hu’s reporters violated “reporting discipline” in covering ethnic riots in China’s western territory of Xinjiang in July.

Ms. Hu sent a team of reporters to Xinjiang but little of their work was published in print or on the Caijing Web site. Caijing’s coverage of the riots led to government criticism of SEEC.

On Wednesday, Caijing’s managing editor, Wang Shuo, who this week submitted his resignation, gave a rebuttal to the staff. According to staffers present, he said that after the Xinjiang riots, Caijing was handed an ultimatum by SEEC, essentially requiring the magazine to go to the parent company to vet any cover story, any controversial story or any story not having to do with finance and economics.

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Post tags: Caijing, Hu Shuli
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