China Watch

Xu Xiang, a 37-year-old reporter, showed up in Qinglong, a Sichuan province town, tasked with investigating allegations that officials had forced residents off their farmland.

Xu Xiang, a 37-year-old reporter, showed up in Qinglong, a Sichuan province town, tasked with investigating allegations that officials had forced residents off their farmland. Over two days, he interviewed farmers and local authorities. Then, Xu posted an article on his website, China8217;s Famous Reporter Online Investigations, alleging corruption. By March, according to delighted farmers and less delighted local officials, the former Communist Party secretary for the surrounding county, the local land administration chief and several other Qinglong officials had been arrested in an investigation by the party8217;s Discipline Inspection Commission that is still underway.

8216;8216;Of course, we were very happy to hear the news,8217;8217; said Shuai Changqing, one of the farmers who led the fight against local officials. The farmers, it turned out, had more than a small role in making the news. One of their own had hired Xu as a reporter, for a negotiated fee of 265.

What happened here in Qinglong was typical of a new kind of journalism that is emerging in response to the Chinese Communist Party8217;s suffocating censorship of newspapers, radio and television. With no more investment than a computer and a taste for taking risks, several dozen Web-based investigative journalists have set up sites and started advertising their willingness8212;for a price8212;to look into scandals that traditional reporters cannot touch.

Official censorship still protects authorities, including corrupt authorities, more than two decades after China launched itself on a path to reform. In a society that is swiftly modernising, the security-conscious Communist Party continues to fear, and filter, the spread of information.

Party censorship also extends to the Internet, which is policed by an elaborate computer system and an army of snoops who monitor what Chinese people read and say online. But that censorship comes after the fact; it can only monitor what has been posted.