An influential weekly newspaper whose staff rebelled to protest heavy-handed censorship by Chinese government officials published as normal Thursday after a compromise that called for relaxing some intrusive controls but left lingering ill-will among some reporters and editors.
The latest edition of the Southern Weekly bore no hints of the dispute that erupted last week over a New Year’s editorial that was rewritten to praise the Communist Party, driving some staff to stop work in protest.
Still fuming, some editors and reporters tried late Wednesday to insert a carefully worded commentary praising the newspaper as a tribune of reform, but were rebuffed by management, an editor said.
Academics spoke of a coming reckoning by authorities to reassert control at the Southern Weekly and any other media that might take encouragement.
“Overall, the authorities do not want this situation to spread,” Peng Peng, a political science researcher at the Guangdong province Social Sciences Academy said.
The weeklong fracas at the Southern Weekly evolved quickly from a row over censorship at one newspaper to a call for free speech and political reform across China, handing an unexpected test to the party leadership headed by Xi Jinping just two months after he took office.
AP
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