IN HUNAN province last August, Tang Hui was sentenced to 18 months in a labour camp. Her crime was to demand tougher sentences for the men who had kidnapped and raped her 11-year-old daughter. In days gone by, Ms Tang would simply have disappeared. In the age of the microblog, thousands of incensed middle-class people took up her case. Ms Tang was released, and on January 7th the government announced that the labour-camps system would be reformed.

In Guangzhou last week, allegedly under orders from the provincial propaganda chief, an editorial in Southern Weekend, a reformist newspaper, was altered before publication. The original called for greater respect of rights enshrined in China’s constitution. The amended version praised the Communist Party and China’s political system. Some Southern Weekend staff called a strike and supporters protested outside their offices in Guangzhou, chanting political slogans of a sort rarely heard on China’s streets since 1989. In both cases, officials were in breach of China’s constitution.

Read Here – The Economist