Chinese Journalists Punished for Story

By: Joe McDonald, Associated Press Writer (AP) A prominent Chinese newspaper group has fired a reporter and suspended two editors after they published an article saying one in 10 female university students in a major Chinese city work as prostitutes, a manager at the paper said Thursday.

The article about the central city of Wuhan appeared May 21 in Youth Reference, published by the China Youth Daily, one of the mainland's biggest newspapers. It was reprinted by several newspapers in areas throughout the country.

Reporter Chen Jieren has been fired and two editors, Fan Yongsheng and Liang Ping, were suspended, said a manager in the newspaper's administration office in Beijing. She wouldn't give her name or other details.

The paper published an apology May 23, saying its report "did not have any basis."

Though still state-run, China's newspapers have grown livelier in recent years, boosting coverage of sports, celebrities, and scandal to compete for readers as government subsidies fall and they are forced to fend for themselves commercially.

China Youth Daily is one of the most prominent of such new market-oriented newspapers, with eye-catching photos, colorful graphics, and reporting on social problems.

Chen's article cited a university student in the central city of Wuhan who said 8% to 10% of female university students paid for their education by working as prostitutes.

The woman, identified only by the surname Zhao, said she also had worked as a prostitute. She said another 25% of female students in Wuhan worked as bar hostesses, who are paid to socialize with men but don't usually engage in sex.

Wuhan is a major industrial center with 7.5 million people and several universities. The claim would mean that tens of thousands of students were involved in the sex trade.

China's sex trade has boomed in recent years with the loosening of official social controls. Many areas have brothels thinly disguised as massage parlors and karaoke bars, and prostitutes openly solicit customers on the streets of provincial cities.

A commentary on the Web site People's Net, run by the Communist Party newspaper People's Daily, said that despite the newspaper's apology, some university students do work in the sex trade and the issue should be discussed openly.

"It's not the reporters but the students who work as prostitutes who are wrecking students' reputations," said the commentary, signed with the name Wu Lanyou.

Chinese editors and reporters have been dismissed in the past for angering authorities by reporting on corruption or politics.

The weekly newspaper 21st Century World Herald in the southern province of Guangdong was forced to suspend publication in March after publishing comments by a former aide to communist founder Mao Zedong calling for free elections.

But newspapers' newly freewheeling ways also have led to embarrassing gaffes.

The Beijing Evening News last year published as news an item from the American satirical weekly The Onion saying the U.S. Congress wanted a new building with a retractable dome and was threatening to leave Washington.

The newspaper admitted its mistake when contacted by foreign reporters, but never told its readers.