Chen and Wang wrote a follow-up story the next day, but local propaganda officials blocked the piece, Chen recalled. The reporters then sent the story to a friend at a Beijing-based newspaper, where it was published a few days later under a pseudonym.
Soon afterward, they recalled, Cheng Yizhong, the star editor, summoned them to his office for a meeting. He urged them to keep digging, even if not all of the stories they wrote could be published. Then he said he hoped their reporting would lead Beijing to abolish the law used to detain Sun.
Chen recalled thinking his editor was crazy. "I thought he might be feverish," he said.
But the pressure for change continued to build. Sun had been detained under a law the party had used to restrict migration for decades, a sort of internal passport system that allowed police to send people without residence permits into any of about 700 custody-and-repatriation centers across the country. Legal scholars began calling for a review of the law, arguing that it violated basic human rights. Journalists began showing how police often detained people at will, forced them to work in the camps and then held them until relatives paid hefty fees.
Cheng kept the Daily at the forefront of the campaign, publishing a series of special reports and editorials. When Beijing announced the decision to abolish the detention system, he put that on the front page, too.
Local Retaliation
Afterward, some senior officials praised the Southern Metropolis Daily's reporting as a model of how the news media could play a constructive role in the party, party sources said.
But the end of the detention system deprived police agencies, a powerful branch of the state, of a lucrative source of income. More importantly, the story had embarrassed local leaders in Guangzhou and perhaps ruined their careers.
Local officials angry at the media usually go to propaganda authorities to demand that journalists be punished. But Beijing had all but endorsed the Daily's reporting by abolishing the detention camp system, which made it difficult for officials in Guangzhou to take action.
Still, they tried to pressure the newspaper. On the day the story of Sun's death was published, Guangzhou's party secretary angrily threatened to take the Daily to court, journalists said. Later, Cheng received a call from an old classmate who delivered a message from another senior city official warning him to back off, colleagues said.
Soon after Beijing abolished the detention law, Guangzhou party leaders ordered an investigation into the newspaper's finances and investigators began pressuring advertisers for evidence of corruption, party officials and advertisers said.
"They couldn't use the propaganda system to punish the newspaper because it hadn't made any serious mistakes," said one provincial party official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "So they turned to the justice system."
Within a month, prosecutors detained Yu Huafeng, the paper's general manager, and questioned him about a $350 necklace an advertiser had given his wife as a gift after she had a child. Yu replied that he had given the advertiser a $1,000 video camera when his wife had a child, and he showed them the receipt to prove it, according to his wife, Xiang Li.
The authorities refused to release Yu. But Cheng mobilized his own supporters in the party, and the provincial propaganda chief intervened and forced the prosecutors to let Yu go, two party officials said.
The showdown suggested the Daily had more support in the party than its enemies, and Cheng and Yu relaxed, colleagues said. They made plans to launch tabloids like the Daily in other cities, and opened talks with another newspaper to join forces and start one in Beijing.
In mid-October, in what appeared to be an important endorsement, the party's central propaganda department in Beijing approved the newspaper. Cheng was named the new paper's editor in chief.
Clampdown Intensifies
But Cheng had underestimated his enemies in Guangzhou. A year earlier, the party's top official in Guangdong province had departed. His replacement was Zhang Dejiang, a party leader who soon complained that reporters in Guangdong were too difficult to control, according to people who heard his remarks.
It was Zhang who had ordered the March clampdown in which Cheng was demoted to deputy editor, party officials said. He had also fired the editor of another paper and completely shut down a third.
In December 2003, city leaders won permission from Zhang or his deputies to continue the corruption probe of the Southern Metropolis Daily, according to two party officials. Prosecutors detained Yu again, and this time he was not released.
But Cheng refused to tone down the paper's coverage. Ten days after Yu's arrest, the Daily reported a world exclusive: Health authorities in the city had identified a suspected case of SARS, the first in China in several months.
The next day, the city confirmed the report and said it had been planning to make the announcement all along. Zhang was embarrassed and furious, a party official said, but because of the government's failed cover-up of the first SARS outbreak, it would have been difficult for him to punish the newspaper for the disclosure.
Instead, the corruption probe intensified. In early January 2004, prosecutors interrogated about 20 editors and business managers at the newspaper, including Cheng.
But even as the pressure grew, the Daily won some of the nation's top journalism honors and announced that circulation had topped 1.4 million and 2003 profits would approach $20 million, making it one of the country's most successful papers.
At the end of January, Zhang turned the screws tighter. At a large gathering of party discipline officials, party sources said, he asked sarcastically whether the party still owned the Daily. Then he declared that the media couldn't just monitor others; someone had to monitor them, too.
One of his deputies accused the Daily's executives of stealing state funds, essentially convicting Yu before trial, the officials said.
A few days later, Cheng delivered a defiant speech to his staff. Dressed in a black jacket and a cotton shirt and sitting at the head of a conference table in a room with more than 100 senior staff members, Cheng said a clash between the newspaper and "a few powerful individuals" had been building since the Sun Zhigang article was published, according to witnesses and a copy of the speech.
"Some people are sharpening their weapons. . . . This storm was bound to come sooner or later," he said. "We are already prepared. For the progress of the nation, the development of society and the happiness of the people, it is worth suffering some inconvenience and misery!"
"Whatever happens," he vowed, "we must not give up our ideals and beliefs."
A few weeks later, a local court convicted Yu of corruption for transferring bonus funds from the paper's advertising department to the newsroom, a common practice at many newspapers. The court also convicted him of bribery for paying a bonus to a supervisor at the Southern Daily, Li Minying.
In March, Yu was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Li received an 11-year sentence for accepting a bribe. The next day, police arrested Cheng.
The moves stunned the newspaper's supporters because there seemed to be no evidence of any crime and because the amount of money involved was relatively small. Journalists across the country signed petitions in protest, and many who had campaigned against the detention law began lobbying on behalf of the Southern Metropolis Daily.
As public outcry grew, three retired party chiefs in Guangdong wrote letters to Zhang urging him to review the case, arguing it had jeopardized the province's reputation as a pioneer of economic reform, party officials said. In an unusually public sign of division within the leadership, a Beijing magazine reported on two of the letters.
In June, the courts reduced Yu's sentence to eight years and Li's to six years on appeal. Cheng remains in prison but has not yet been charged with a crime, a sign that party leaders have not decided what to do.
The Southern Metropolis Daily is still publishing, but editors are more careful about criticizing local authorities. Almost all of the paper's key ad salesmen have resigned, and dozens of reporters have quit. In the first quarter of the year, officials said, the paper lost $1.5 million.
But the new tabloid started by Cheng in Beijing has adopted the aggressive style of the old Daily and appears to be prospering. "This is the way it works," said a senior editor in Guangzhou who spoke on condition of anonymity. "For every two steps forward, there is a step backward. But we're still going to keep pushin
