CHINESE DAILY EDITOR QUITS OVER COMMUNIST CLAMPDOWN

BEIJING: March continues to be a month of discontent for journalists in China with a top editor of a prominent daily saying he resigned because of the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) stifling control of the media and increasing censorship.

Yu Shaolei, culture editor of Guangzhou’s Souther n Metropolis Daily, posted a photo of his resignation letter on Weibo, a Twitter-like social media platform in China.

The reason Yu gave was in a reference to President Xi Jinping’s much- publicised tour of China’s top state media outlets few weeks ago where he asked journalists to follow the CPC. Yu wrote: “I cannot bear your name”.

The rest of the letter was emotional.

“This spring, let’s end things once and for all; my knees can’t take it anymore, having been in the same position for so long, and I want to see if I can have a change. To the person in charge of monitoring my Weibo and letting his superiors know what to delete, you can now let out a sigh of relief.

“Sorry for making you nervous all these years, and I hope there will be a new direction with your career,” it continued. “Please also tell all of the friends who care about me, I won’t be seeing you anymore, Southern Metropolis Daily,” Yu said.

The government asked the letter to be taken off the Internet, not before snapshots of the page were circulated online.

Yu’s resignation comes within days of the authorities detaining a number of journalists in connection with an online letter written by anonymous “loyal communist party members” asking for Xi’s resignation.