Fears of Chinese media crackdown ahead of leadership transition Some media watchers suggested Mr Lu lost his job after the newspaper printed a story about the backgrounds of several members of China's Politburo, among them Xi Jinping, the man likely to be China's next president. At the end of June Bloomberg's website was blocked in China after it ran a length expose about the multi-million dollar financial interest of members of Mr Xi's family. Doug Young, a journalism scholar from Shanghai's Fudan University, said the two cases were likely "part of a big crackdown that has been going on pretty much all year in the run up to the big leadership change." The idea is for everyone to toe the party line, for everyone to be on the same page. They want to show unity," said Young, the author of 'The Party Line: How the media dictates public opinion in modern China', a forthcoming book about the Chinese media. Yang Haipeng, a former Oriental Morning Post journalist who is credited as one of the reporters who broke the scandal involving the suspected murder of British businessman Neil Heywood, said he believed both cases in Shanghai and Guangzhou were linked to the forthcoming leadership transition. "[The central government] has not decided on the [future] political route yet so it is now supersensitive to any challenge from the public," he said. Now is really a chaotic time, it's hard to tell what is OK and what is not. Anything could upset their sensitive nerves. Zhu Jianguo, a Shenzhen-based political commentator, said the crackdown was a "specific one, launched before the 18th Congress." "The crackdown is local, central and national," he added. "The 18th Congress is not a step forward, but [a step] backward" One technique authorities are thought to be employing to restrict pre-transition coverage in some parts of China involves discouraging or banning reporters from covering stories outside their home provinces, a tradition in Chinese journalism that allows reporters to operate away from the gaze of their local propaganda chiefs. Two journalists from Guangzhou's New Express told The Daily Telegraph they were being discouraged from off-base reporting, in the lead-up to the autumn Congress, but said it was not "convenient" to discuss the issue in more detail. An experienced journalist from one of Beijing's leading newspapers said restrictions on reporting in other provinces had been imposed "a while back" but were not being enforced rigorously. "It is being done on a case-by-case basis," he said, adding that the restriction may be connected to the forthcoming Congress. Other journalists in Hunan, Beijing and Guangdong said it was "not convenient" to discuss reporting conditions at the moment. Young, from Fudan University, said it was easier for propaganda chiefs to "keep tabs on" reporters who were restricted to their home province. "They are much more difficult to control when they report outside their home area," he said. Mr Yang, the former Oriental Morning Post journalist, said he believed media control would relax once the leadership transition was over. Maybe in 6 months, things will change again, back to [how they were] before. But we can't be too optimistic about this, because we in the media are like dancing girls: we dance quicker or slower as told. Now is a crazy time, before the 18th Congress. Sheng Hong, the economist whose interview is rumoured to have triggered the editorial changes at Shanghai's Oriental Morning Post, said he was "surprised" by the apparent crackdown. People should have the right to express themselves freely. Those who suppress the media and forbid the exposure of mistakes are actually anti-Party. Mr Sheng told the Daily Telegraph on Wednesday. "The Emperors could not hear what the people were saying so they did not know what was actually going on," he added. Additional reporting Valentina Luo