Breaking The News.(Media industry enjoying more freedom in China)(Column)

It started at the 21st century Herald. In March its editors decided to run a controversial interview with Li Rui, a former secretary to Mao Zedong. In the interview, Li criticized top leaders and accused the Communist Party of being heavy-handed. Then the Beijing bosses proved him right: the newspaper was immediately shut down. Since then a string of newspapers and magazines--including Southern Weekly, China Youth Daily, Caijing and the Beijing New Times--has been shuttered, had issues pulled from newsstands or had staff fired because they crossed the political lines of the party.

It may seem like the beginning of a Chinese media crackdown, but it's actually the start of something good. For the past six months Chinese news junkies have witnessed a period of greater media freedom, which many have linked to the new generation of leaders who came to power at the 16th Party Congress last November. Early on, President Hu Jintao criticized state-run China Central Television for pandering to government officials. In January, Li Changchun, the Politburo's propaganda czar, urged the local media to be more open in their reporting. And many Chinese journalists have taken them up on their offer, even if it means crossing the party. But the changes that are afoot in China's media industry may be more powerful than any political order from on high.

Like so much else in China, the driving force behind the liberalizing media is the market. Faced with increasing competition, Chinese news outlets are going after readers with hard-hitting, aggressively reported stories. The number of privately owned publications across the country is mushrooming, while the props supporting state newspapers are slowly being pulled out from under them. Sensing the new privatizing trends, many of the leading government dailies have already launched commercial papers that are far more enterprising and, in turn, sell much better. "Newspapers have to cater to readers to get circulation and advertising revenue," says Liu Libo, an editor at Caijing, the Beijing magazine that was censored for reporting on Shanghai's recent real-estate scandal. "The media are getting more and more aggressive in trying to report the news. That's the power of the market."

For decades Chinese state newspapers enjoyed captive markets. The country's government units were literally forced to subscribe to state publications. No more. The party's propaganda arm recently issued an order ...