A final victory for China’s propaganda chiefs

ON A FIRST posting to China, two decades ago, Chaguan covered a disaster that was as grim as it was revealing: an explosion that killed 38 children at a school where pupils were assembling fireworks to pay their fees. Reporting that tragedy in March 2001 was made possible by the courage of bereaved parents in Fanglin, a remote village in the southern province of Jiangxi. To alert national leaders to their plight they accepted interviews and identified local officials and teachers who forced children as young as eight to fit fuses to firecrackers in classrooms. Exposing this crime took bravery by Chinese journalists, too, notably from risk-taking, commercially driven outlets that enjoyed a golden age in the 1990s and early 2000s, protected by well-placed patrons and by the profits that their livelier content generated. “I have to go, a China Youth Daily reporter is here,” a grieving mother said during a telephone interview, naming one of the feistier newspapers of that time. Locals smuggled Chinese journalists into their village, then hid them from thugs sent to beat them. As for Chaguan, he was detained for “illegal reporting” at a police roadblock outside Fanglin.