GUANGZHOU, China (Reuters) - Chinese police broke up scuffles outside the gates of a prominent newspaper in southern Guangzhou on Tuesday, as Communist Party authorities showed signs of a taking a harder line against journalists defying official censorship. <\/p>\n
Crowds of people congregated for a second day outside the liberal Southern Weekly that has become embroiled in a highly symbolic open revolt against press control in Guangdong, China's most prosperous and liberal province, but many journalists were reluctant to call it a full-blown strike. <\/p>\n
Guangdong was the birthplace of reforms, begun three decades ago, that propelled China to become the world's second-largest economy. How the party responds to the paper's battle against meddling by propaganda authorities stands to be a key indicator of new party leader Xi Jinping's reformist inclinations. <\/p>\n
The scuffles broke out after supporters of the paper, published on Thursdays, jeered and skirmished with a small band of leftists holding posters of Chairman Mao Zedong and signs denouncing the Southern Weekly as \"a traitor newspaper\" for defying the party. <\/p>\n
\"These people (leftists) are paid agitators of the government, twisting the truth with propaganda. We had to do something about it,\" said pro-press freedom protester Cheng Qiubo. <\/p>\n
Dozens of police officers had to intervene, though the protests were allowed to continue. Two technicians with a ladder tried to rig a surveillance camera to the branch of a tree outside the newspaper gates, but were swiftly surrounded and shouted down by angry crowds and forced to retreat. <\/p>\n
The standoff at the Southern Weekly, long seen as a beacon of independent and in-depth reporting in China's stilted, highly controlled media landscape, escalated into a national social media issue and has triggered demands for the new leadership to enshrine media freedom. <\/p>\n
The drama began late last week when reporters at the weekly accused censors of replacing an original New Year letter to readers that called for a constitutional government with another piece lauding the party's achievements. <\/p>\n
Several protesters were called into local police stations to be questioned, according to a female known by her blogger name Ran Xiang JieJie, who said this was intended as subtle \"intimidation\" to deter further activism. <\/p>\n
A purported directive issued by Beijing's Central Propaganda Department has been widely circulated in media circles and suggests authorities may be tightening their grip. <\/p>\n
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