Arrest of Journalists Seen as Payback for A Bold Voice in China cites Wang Jianmin, a journalist at Asia Week (that apparently means Yazhou zhoukan 亞洲週刊)

called the journalists' arrests on embezzlement charges "the newest method to persecute Chinese intellectuals."

For Wang and others, Cheng's case has become an example of the frequent gap between liberalizing reforms announced by national leaders in Beijing and day-to-day experiences of people who deal with provincial, municipal and rural officials. As the Southern Metropolis News case went forward, for instance, the Chinese government published a white paper in Beijing hailing 2003 as a landmark year for progress in human rights, including freedom of the press.

"Although the central government wants to rule the country in a legal way, the provincial and municipal governments still have a lot of power," said Chen Feng, an editor who formerly worked under Cheng at the Southern Metropolis News. "Whether you break the law depends on what the local leaders believe, and not the law."

According to an anonymous journalist quoted by Arnold Zeitlin at The Jamestown Foundation:

'The thing that angered the government and the police is the coverage of Sun Zhigang, the college graduate who was beaten to death by some police last year,' said the journalist.

'The Sun Zhigang affair is very, very important to the Guangzhou police department. When the incident happened, the head of the police department had a chance to be promoted to the head of the police department of Guangdong province. So, Mr. Zhu, then the head of the Guangzhou police went to the Southern Metropolitan to ask the newspaper with tears not to report it. But they did. The report crashed the political future of Mr. Zhu and other police officers. The SARS report didn't. So, at the trial after the beating incident, one guilty police officer told another police officer, 'I will kill you if you don't manage to crackdown on the Southern Metropolitan'. Yes, that time has come.'