China Puts Its Media on Shorter Leash

China has recently shut down newspapers and detained academics in an effort to rein in dissent, analysts say.

The action has sparked a debate here on whether the government has launched a new era of repression. But analysts say they believe the recent action is meant to ensure that the country’s burgeoning media practices more self-censorship.

Authorities last week temporarily shut down a newsweekly that has been in circulation for less than two months. New Weekly is run by former members of another popular paper, Southern Weekend, which has seen many of its editors removed for failing to toe the government’s line.

Censors may have been offended by New Weekly’s sensational headlines that included “TV Hostess Dies in Deputy Mayor’s Bed” and “Female Students Required to Dance with Officials,” a story about a university in Nanjing that ordered students to dance with visiting dignitaries.

At another paper, the China Youth Daily, the top editor was removed this month. Some observers speculated that he was punished for his paper’s coverage of official corruption. The state-run daily was among the first to report that a party official in Shenzhen forced public school students to watch a movie made by his daughter, and pay for the tickets.

It was unclear whether the New Weekly would reopen. Authorities suspended the 21st Century Globe Herald for a month early last year. It never resumed publication.

Some analysts said the government action was a stern warning to journalists that they should not push the envelope, and not necessarily a sign of a new era of repression.

“This administration is no different from the past in the sense that all people in power do not want to rock the boat. Their challenge is to not encourage dissenting views on either side of the political spectrum,” said Linda Chelan Li, a political scientist at the City University of Hong Kong. “But China has become a much more pluralistic society. There’s no way to return to the old days.”

Chinese journalists say new publications are vulnerable to unwritten rules governing the domestic media. Reporters say they need to be bold, but it could cost them their jobs. Papers survive on their editors’ political instincts.

Clampdowns can be seasonal and unpredictable. Something that is acceptable one day may not be the next time around. Enforcement, reporters say, is aimed at keeping journalists in fear of breaking the rules so that they would censor themselves as much as possible. The threat of a trip to the public security bureau constantly hangs over them.

This week, China detained at least three outspoken intellectuals. Author Yu Jie was accused of endangering national security and told to stop posting his writings on the Internet. The other two, literary critic and democracy activist Liu Xiaobo and political theorist Zhang Zuhua, are part of a writers group that recently gave an award to the author of a banned book on Mao Tse-tung’s purges of intellectuals in the 1950s.

All three have been released.

The banned memoir, “The Past Is Not Like (Dissipating) Smoke,” by Zhang Yihe, and another critically acclaimed book, “An Investigative Report on Chinese Peasants,” by Chen Guidi, were bestsellers before they were blacklisted. Bootleg versions still sell briskly.