AS THE MANDATE SLIPS AWAY:

Journalists protest Chinese censorship (David Lague, DECEMBER 30, 2005, International Herald Tribune)

In a rare protest against an official media crackdown, about 100 journalists from one of China's most aggressive daily newspapers have gone on strike after the paper's editor and two of his deputies were fired, local journalists said Friday.

The editor of The Beijing News, Yang Bin, and deputy editors, Sun Xuedong and Li Duoyu, were dismissed Wednesday as part of what media watchdog groups describe as a sweeping government campaign to tighten control over the media and the Internet.

The striking journalists, about a third of the staff, stopped work on Thursday after editors from The Beijing News's conservative parent paper, the Guangming Daily, were appointed to replace Yang and his deputies.