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Josephine Ma

Nailene Chou

Publicity Department officials pounce after the journal loses its official sponsor

The bimonthly Strategy and Management journal has been shut down after 11 years of frequent brushes with authorities.

Many observers attributed its demise to a critical article on North Korea featured in its August issue.  A former editor said the publication had been living on borrowed time for several months.

The journal was affiliated with the State Development Planning Commission, which was merged with the State Economic and Trade Commission into the National Development and Reform Commission in last year's government reshuffle, leaving it without a parent.

All publications on the mainland must be affiliated with government departments or agencies, as independent publications are banned.

The journal technically became illegal in June, when it was ordered to shut down by the Communist Party's Publicity Department.

However, its editors clung to the hope of finding a sponsor.

'This system has made us act like stray dogs,' said Huang Zhong, former executive editor-in-chief.

Though several staff had already jumped ship, the remaining workers produced the August issue while bracing for closure.

The controversial article on North Korea was written by Wang Zhongwen , a researcher at the Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences. He wrote that Pyongyang was not only ungrateful for political and economic support from the mainland, but had often put Beijing in an awkward position with its political brinkmanship and damaged its ties with the US.

Mr Wang also accused Pyongyang of having scant regard for the welfare of its own people.

'North Korea ignored the life and death of its people. Instead of making an effort for economic development and improving the livelihood of its people, it develops nuclear weapons,' he wrote. '[The government] will do nothing good for North Korea or Northeast Asia.'

Mr Huang said he believed authorities had used the journal's lack of an official sponsor as an excuse to shut it down.

'[Publicity Department officials] have been waiting a long time for an opportunity [to close down the journal],' he said.

Strategy and Management had gained a reputation for being an elitist publication over its 11 years in publication.

The mainland's leading academics and think-tank scholars from the new left and liberal camps often used its pages to square off on important social, political and international issues.

'It will be hard to find a magazine to replace Strategy and Management,' Mr Huang said. 'It has been a platform for the cultivation of strategic thinking [about the country's development] and its closure means China has even less room for such discussions.'



Periodical shut down after article on N Korea