Cryptic message triggers fears over fate of Chinese reporter’s investigative team

Journalist Wang Keqin causes alarm with blogpost amid claims officials are targeting his China Economic Times newspaper Concerns are growing over the fate of one of China’s most influential investigative journalists amid reports that he and his colleagues are the victims of a backlash by senior Communist party officials. Wang Keqin, a pioneer of in-depth and undercover reporting over the past decade, caused alarm with a cryptic message on his Sina Weibo microblog about taboos and silencing speech. “Where political power burns books, it will also ultimately burn people also,” he wrote. Associates said senior officials were targeting his newspaper – China Economic Times – and its investigative news department was being broken up. “I just received word from a friend at China Economic Times: ‘A ridiculous leader just visited us here, and aside from carrying out political struggle and grinding over people, he understands nothing.’” said a post by Qian Gang, director of the China Media Project at Hong Kong University. Contacted by phone, Wang said he was unable to comment. “Sorry, I have to hang up,” he said. Wang – who grew up in a poor farming family in Gansu province – is among a handful of senior reporters who have pushed back the boundaries of journalism in China, where the media was previously used almost exclusively as a propaganda tool. His reports on child deaths linked to mishandled vaccines, the dire conditions of taxi drivers, and mafia-like “black society” scams have exposed gangsters, extortionists and corrupt officials. This has reportedly led to a price being put on his head. “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. Commenting below his post, supporters described Wang as the “backbone of China” and expressed sympathy for his predicament. Ahead of this apparent setback, Wang appeared confident that investigative journalism was growing stronger despite waves of restrictions. “Over a mere 10 years,” he wrote in a recent blogpost , “there were more reporters in the field writing higher quality articles for a growing range of publications.” “Investigative reporters are receiving increasing attention and social respect,” he said. • Additional reporting by Cecily Huang China Press freedom Journalist safety Censorship Newspapers & magazines Newspapers Jonathan Watts guardian.co.uk

Posted by on July 18, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.