Global Times: China's true voice or nationalistic rabble-rouser?

In early April, when famed mainland artist Ai Weiwei went missing at Beijing airport, China's official media was silent - except for one publication.

Global Times, a daily tabloid that is an arm of People's Daily, the Communist Party's mouthpiece, did not run the news on its front page, but rather on page 14 as a commentary on its 'opinion' pages. The article was published in Chinese on April 6, three days after Ai was last seen being stopped by police as he boarded a flight to Hong Kong.

'Ai Weiwei does as he pleases and often does what others dare not,' the editorial said of the artist, who is also the son of the late Ai Qing , a noted Chinese poet. 'He himself probably realised that he was never far away from the red line of Chinese law ... The law will not bend or make concessions for 'people with special status' just because of Western criticism.'

Why was Global Times the first media outlet to touch on the politically sensitive topic of Ai's disappearance? The answer is simple, says Hu Xijin, the tabloid's editor-in-chief. 'We noticed no other media reported it.' Initially 'we were also anxious about reporting this matter'.

As a unit of the official mouthpiece, Global Times operates in a nebulous area, says Ding Dong, a prominent Chinese historian and former scholar at the Academy of Social Sciences in Shanxi province. An article published in People's Daily is indisputably the government's voice. But one published in a subsidiary paper can take more licence with a subject because while it 'echoes the mainstream' thinking, Ding says, 'it is not 100 per cent the official position'.

'If People's Daily carries such an editorial, then the matter is hugely serious,' adds an editor at the China Youth Daily, the official publication of the Communist Party's younger set, the Youth League. 'By publishing the story in Global Times, the authorities are free to advance or retreat, maintaining some flexibility' on the issue.