Kristin Jones [Senior Asia Research Associate, Committee to Protect Journalists]: "Journalist Yang Xiaoqing's imprisonment caught the attention of ordinary people in China who recognized it as the case of a man who had taken on powerful officials in his home county and was paying the price. Without the vocal advocacy of his wife Gong Jie, supporters like Internet journalist Li Xinde and others, Yang would still be in jail today. His wife told CPJ that the journalist suffered from severe health problems during his nine months in jail, so it is hard to call him one of the lucky ones. And yet many more of his colleagues remain behind bars on much longer sentences just for doing their jobs, including Gao Qinrong, a Xinhua news agency reporter imprisoned since 1998 for exposing a corrupt irrigation scheme in Shanxi province, and Li Changqing, deputy news director of Fuzhou Daily sentenced in January to three years in prison after writing in support of a local Communist Party official who blew the whistle on corruption in his ranks.

Chinese leaders have intermittently called on the media to perform supervisory roles in exposing and publicizing corruption. The recent purge of Party leaders in Shanghai again brought the entrenched problem into the spotlight. But administrative oversight of the press means that journalists have rarely been permitted to take the lead in exposing corruption at the highest levels, or in their own communities. Recent restrictions on reporting outside of a newspaper's own region have further limited the role that the media can be expected to take. And as Yang's case shows, the threat of jail hangs over any journalist who manages to penetrate the system of self-censorship. It is little wonder that his imprisonment angered so many Chinese citizens. When the government punishes journalists for reporting the news, it robs the public of one of the few really effective watchdogs on official actions."