Peter Ford reports in the Christian Science Monitor:
Independent journalism in China, never a robust phenomenon, has taken a body blow with the resignation from the country’s top investigative business magazine of its pioneering editor.
Hu Shuli, editor and founder of the biweekly Caijing, stepped down Monday after a prolonged tussle with the magazine’s owners over financial and political differences.
“The course of advancing freedom of expression is not very straight … and there is not a very strong force behind it,” adds Gong Wenxiang, a journalism professor at Peking University. “I don’t think the environment for people like her [Ms. Hu] is very positive.”
“Caijing is one of a kind,” says Xiao Qiang, head of the China Internet Project at the University of California at Berkeley. “The fact Hu has to leave symbolizes the failure of that kind of experiment. The space she created has been closed down, and I don’t think anything like Caijing will come up soon.”
