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Police Toss Out Arrest Warrant for Chinese Reporter in Hiding

Originally published by The New York Times, 30 July 2010
By ANDREW JACOBS
 BEIJING — For China’s investigative journalists, who grapple with heavy-handed censors and accusations of bribe-taking, the case of a Shanghai-based reporter appears to offer a positive turn.

The episode did not start auspiciously for the reporter, Qiu Ziming, 28. He went into hiding this week after county police in Zhejiang Province announced they were seeking his arrest for reporting on accusations of insider trading at a paper company in a four-part series in The Economic Observer, a well-regarded weekly.

But on Wednesday, Mr. Qiu’s colleagues sprang into action, publishing articles on the Internet and e-mailing links to a satirical wanted poster. Even the state-owned broadcaster, CCTV, ran a segment that revealed how the company, which went public in 2004, had used its political connections to exact revenge.

In the broadcast, a reporter asks a representative how the company, Zhejiang Kan Specialty Materials, was able to have the Suichang county police try to arrest him. “You can say that this is a kind of concern and love the government has for star enterprises like us,” the representative said. “The government helps us handle certain issues.”

Guo Hongchao, a senior editor at the newspaper, said the staff was stunned by the officially sanctioned persecution of Mr. Qiu. “For a commercial enterprise to have this much power is shocking,” he said in an interview. “If they have disagreements with the report itself, there are avenues for discussing it. Or they can simply sue us in court.”

Mr. Qiu may have disappeared, but he did not lose the power of his pen — or at least his thumbs. On Wednesday he sent out defiant messages from an undisclosed location, taunting the police to come find him. “Those who have done no wrong are not afraid of ghosts knocking in the middle of the night,” he wrote. “This is not over. I will get an apology from the Suichang police.”

And, in fact, he did. On Thursday, the local Public Security Bureau apologized to Mr. Qiu and, more remarkably, decided to scrap the arrest warrant. In a statement, The Economic Observer said it was considering whether to pursue legal action against the Kan company for potentially endangering the safety of its reporter and for making “false accusations which have caused damage to the reputation of our newspaper.”

Mr. Qiu has garnered broad support on the Internet, with his Weibo account gaining 8,000 followers and his case generating sympathetic media coverage.

Although the Kan company may well have a libel suit up its sleeve, media analysts said the episode highlights the ever-shifting rules of engagement between investigative journalists and their well-connected quarry.

Zhan Jiang, a journalism professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University, said the case offered a sign of change for journalism in China, hobbled internally by reporters who accept bribes to quash damaging stories and externally by censors and other pressures. The latest developments, he said, showed that China was making progress in the rule of law, as well as in the growing power of populist sentiment.

“With the help of media, which can enlist other members of the media, the weight of public opinion can be brought to bear,” he said.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/world/asia/30china.html