The postponed appeal hearing of the jailed editor of a popular newspaper opened yesterday in southern China, in a case that has been linked to the reform tendencies of the country's new communist leaders.
Yu Huafeng, former vice chief editor of the Southern Metropolitan Daily, was sentenced in March to 12 years in prison for corruption related to the routine distribution of bonuses at the paper.
His case has, however, been widely linked to anger by the central government over the paper's reports last year on the government-led cover up of the SARS outbreak.
The paper also won few friends in the government with its reports about the fatal beating of a migrant worker by prison police in Guangdong Province. The official paper of the booming southern province of Guangdong has garnered nationwide readership in its attempts to test the limits of China's state-controlled media.
"The appeal hearing began this morning," Xu Zhiyong, Yu's lawyer said.
Also convicted on the same charges in the case was Li Minying, former deputy Communist Party head at the Southern Daily group, the publisher of the paper, who was sentenced to 11 years.
Cheng Yizhong, chief editor of the paper, is awaiting trial on similar charges.
The Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and at least 20 high-ranking Guangdong provincial officials have expressed serious concern over the case.
"Whether or not Yu Huafeng gets a lighter sentence today will be the result of a conflict of views within the Communist Party," the center said.
Hong Kong press reports have placed the conflict between Li Changchun (
Li reportedly issued the orders to punish the paper's editors, while Liu has sought to fulfill Hu's hopes for greater openness in the Chinese press, the reports said.
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