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read the entire article: http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/linked-08232012150249.html http://www.rfa.org
Editor Suicide Linked to Pressure Chinese journalists say they 'can think but can't write, can write but can't publish.' The suicide this week of a top features editor at the Communist Party official newspaper People's Daily has sent shock waves through the tightly controlled world of China's state-run media, commentators said on Thursday. "I received a text from a friend to say that ... Xu Huaiqian jumped off a building and died on Wednesday afternoon at 2:00 p.m., because he was suffering from clinical depression," wrote Xu Xunlei, editor of the Hangzhou-based Metropolis Express newspaper. "Xu Huaiqian said when he was alive that his pain lay in the fact that he dared to think things but didn't dare to say them; that he dared to say them, but didn't dare to write them; that he dared to write them, but that there was nowhere to publish them," wrote microblog user @huayanbatu. Meanwhile, Beijing-based veteran journalist Gao Yu said she had frequently written articles that her editors didn't dare to use, a situation which most Chinese journalists have found themselves in. "When I wrote for the China News Service, I would pass myself off as a foreign writer based overseas, but very frequently they couldn't publish my articles," Gao said. "It made me feel as if I couldn't express my ideas," she said. "I was also in the position of daring to write but being unable to publish." "Of course it's hugely depressing to be in that situation." Li Datong, ousted former editor of the cutting-edge China Youth Daily supplement "Freezing Point," said people who worked at the People's Daily would have long ago come to terms with media restrictions, however. " I think this is an individual case, and it doesn't really represent anything else," he said. Xu graduated from the Chinese department of the prestigious Peking University in 1989, going on to gain a master's degree in literature at the equally prestigious Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, before starting work at the People's Daily. He also wrote a number of articles in his spare time, which were published on the China Writer website, including "Testifying Through Death" and an essay collection, "Walking and Thinking." Detailed party directives—which can arrive daily at editors’ desks—also restrict coverage related to public health, environmental accidents, deaths in police custody, and foreign policy, among other issues, the report said.
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