BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese journalist Yang Xiaoqing had told his wife he knew how to handle the risks of his job, but that was before he was arrested after reporting claims of corruption, joining the country's list of detained reporters.
Yang was arrested in January after five months' hiding from police, charged with extortion after reporting claims of dishonest state property sales in his home county in southern China's Hunan province, his wife Gong Jie told Reuters.
But Yang, his family and other reporters insisted he was innocent and said officials persecuted him for exposing their misdeeds.
In China, outright censorship is just one of the pitfalls journalists face, and officials can also use their control of the courts to restrict the news, they said.
"The key problem in Yang's case is that the legal system isn't independent. Leaders can use criminal charges to trap journalists, and that makes challenging them, even local leaders, dangerous," Li Xinde, an on-line investigative journalist who has protested Yang's arrest, told Reuters on Monday.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based group, said China was the world's leading jailer of journalists in 2005 for the seventh consecutive year with 32 behind bars.
Yang, 36, is in some ways just the kind of reporter China's authorities seek to nurture. A Communist Party member who had hopes of becoming an official, he studied Marxism at the Hunan province Party School where cadres are trained, and worked for the China Industry and Economic News, a broadsheet run by the Communist Party's youth wing, his wife said.
But Yang riled officials in Hunan, especially his home county of Longhui, where disgruntled teachers and workers took him their complaints, she said.
"He liked to do investigative reporting that spoke up for ordinary people, but that left bad blood with local officials going back a long time," she said.
EXPOSES
In 2005, Yang reported Longhui officials sold off a struggling state-owned food plant and paper mill to business associates for much more than the book value they reported.
Accusations of bureaucratic abuses have been common in China as officials push through breakneck privatisation policies. But in Hunan, Yang's highly specific charges struck a nerve.
County officials said Yang concocted the reports, using them to extort hush money of 800,000 yuan (58,000 pounds). The officials issued orders for his arrest.
Li Fengfa, a journalist who worked with Yang on one report about the sales, told Reuters he stood by Yang's claims.
In China, it is not unknown for reporters to demand payments to either publish or bury stories.
But Yang's lawyers said procedures were tilted against him, making it difficult to challenge apparent holes in the accusations, which could lead to prison for four years or more.
Yang was charged by prosecutors controlled by the very same Longhui County officials who first accused him, and might be tried in the county court, they said.
"In China, a county secretary holds a lot of power -- financial, ideological, personnel -- and that makes it difficult to ensure a fair hearing of any charges," said Du Zhaoyong, a Beijing lawyer representing Yang.
County officials and police contacted by Reuters declined to discuss the case or said they knew nothing. A provincial police officer investigating the accusations, Huang Mulin, said it was too early to say if or when Yang would be tried.
"He's promised to give up reporting when he gets out," said Gong, who has not been allowed to see her husband in detention.
