Censored Chinese newspaper to publish ‘as normal’: reporter

GUANGZHOU, China (AFP) ― A Chinese weekly newspaper at the center of rare public protests about government censorship will publish as usual on Thursday, a senior reporter said, following reports of a deal to end the row.

“The newspaper will publish as normal on Thursday,” the reporter at Southern Weekly, who declined to be named, said after reports said staff had reached an agreement with the authorities.

The row at the popular liberal paper, which had an article urging greater rights protection replaced with one praising the ruling party, has seen demonstrators mass outside its headquarters in the southern city of Guangzhou. The affair is seen as a test for the new Communist Party leadership under Xi Jinping.

“It was a case of internal politics,” the reporter said. “I am writing an article as we speak, it’s about Alexis de Tocqueville’s ‘The old Regime and the Revolution,’” referring to the French thinker’s analysis of the 1789 Revolution.

The South China Morning Post said Guangdong province’s communist chief Hu Chunhua, a rising star in the party, had stepped in to mediate in the row.

“There’s a verbal agreement in place. Basically it’s back to normal, but we’ll see how the two sides react to each other in the future,” Dow Jones Newswires quoted a Southern Weekly editor as saying.

Under the deal, journalists involved in the protests would not be punished and propaganda authorities would no longer directly interfere in content before publication, Dow Jones said.