No-go zones
The press have been attempting to flex their muscles on the mainland recently, with contrasting fortunes for two very different people. Guo Degang is a famous comedian who has been pilloried for advertising a fake medicinal product. Wu Ping was an unknown, middle-aged woman from Chongqing until a couple of weeks ago, when her battle to save her ramshackle house from demolition transformed her into a media darling.
Guo's fall from grace has been spectacular. It began on March 15, World Consumer Day, when CCTV aired a programme exposing a best-selling slimming aid as bogus. Guo was paid either 2 million or 3 million yuan - depending on which paper you read - for being the face of the product's TV commercials. CCTV savaged him for colluding in duping the public by using his popularity to promote the product.
As the rest of the media rounded on him, Guo fought back via his blog and in an interview with the Beijing Youth Daily. It's the job of the State Food and Drug Administration, he said, to judge whether any TV ad makes misleading or false claims.
Meanwhile, Ms Wu was becoming a media heroine. The saga of her 'nail house' - slang referring to residents who refuse to move from their homes - attracted the attention of newspapers, TV stations and netizens across the country. Ms Wu's tough-minded refusal to leave her house until she'd been offered adequate compensation was a juicy David-and-Goliath story that touched a chord with mainlanders. But it became political once newspapers started running editorials about Ms Wu as the first test of the much-vaunted new property law, passed last month. On March 24th, all mainland papers reportedly received a notice from the State Council Information Office, saying there was to be no more reporting on the 'nail house'.
Bloggers who travelled to Chongqing kept the story alive, though, and used their mobile phones to provide images. Such citizen journalism wasn't an option for Caijing, the mainland's leading business magazine, when its March 5 issue failed to appear. Its cover story on the potential impact of the property law seems to have made someone, somewhere, nervous.
Another controversial story also vanished from the headlines suspiciously quickly last month. Reporters from a TV station in Hangzhou , Zhejiang province , decided to test how corrupt local hospitals were, and passed off tea as urine samples. Six of the 10 hospitals visited took the bait and told the reporters they had infections and needed expensive medication.