Beijing: A Chinese newspaper editor said he is resigning in protest of tighter controls in the media, according to a posting on his social media account, a rare rebuke to China’s Communist leaders.
The move comes amid increasingly louder calls from Beijing for the country’s media to toe the party line.
Only last month President Xi Jinping visited the leading state media organisations where he called on them to “be surnamed party”, which means that above all, they must answer to the party.
Yu Shaolei, the editor of Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper, posted his resignation notice on his social media account, under the title “Unable to follow your surname”, an apparent reference to Mr Xi’s call.
Along with a screenshot of the resignation notice, he had also written a note explaining his decision.
“I’m getting old; after such a long time (kneeling), my knees can’t stand it anymore,” Mr Yu said, in the post that appeared to be deleted two hours after it was posted on Sina Weibo, China’s version of Twitter.
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China has a huge online censorship apparatus which removes any comments deemed sensitive. The Telegraph viewed the post in a cached form on the Freeweibo monitoring site.
Mr Yu, who says in the note he will step down on Friday after almost 16 years, is the culture editor at the Guangzhou-based newspaper, which has built a reputation as one of China’s most aggressive outlets.
Rights groups say Beijing’s media clampdown is part of broader effort by China’s stability-obsessed leaders to stifle freedom of speech.
The social media accounts of property tycoon Ren Zhiqiang were shut down last month after he drew the attention of authorities for lambasting state media for swearing absolute loyalty to the Communist Party.
Mr Ren – who had more than 37 million followers online – said that as taxpayers’ money was funding the media outlets they should instead serve the public.
In 2013 journalists at Southern Weekend – a sister paper of Southern Metropolis Daily – protested after an editorial was re-written by a local propaganda official.
Mr Yu could not immediately be reached for comment.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/12206275/China-newspaper-editor-resigns-over-media-control.html
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