A journalist who reported on alleged corruption among local officials in the central Chinese province of Hunan is to go on trial next week on blackmail charges, his wife said yesterday.
The case against Yang Xiaoqing highlights therisks run by reporters who challenge entrenched interests in China, where government and Communist party officials often have considerable influence over courts and judicial authorities.
Mr Yang is to be tried in Hunan's Longhui county despite concerns about possible involvement in the case by local political leaders angry about a series of stories he wrote last year.
Local police have accused the reporter of fabricating corruption stories in an attempt to blackmail the county government.
But a police official in the Hunan provincial capital of Changsha told the FT last month there had been "relatively severe administrative interference" in the proceedings against Mr Yang.
Provincial authorities had advised Longhui police to drop the charges because of lack of evidence, the official said.
County prosecutors had initially rejected the case but later agreed to submit it to the Longhui court, which is now scheduled to open Mr Yang's trial next week, said his wife, Gong Jie.
Ms Gong alleges that the prosecution is driven by a powerful local Communist party official who was among those implicated in a series of stories Mr Yang wrote about the loss of state assets during the privatisation of local companies.
That allegation was given some support by the provincial police official, who said "a certain leader of the county [party] committee" had "meddled" in the case.
Human rights activists and media watchdogs say Chinese journalists who write about sensitive political issues or who anger local officials are vulnerable to prosecution on charges ranging from revealing state secrets to fiddling their expenses.
Ms Gong said her husband's lawyer had been unable to review the case because the Longhui court claimed the presiding judge was away on a business trip and would return only shortly before the trial.
"This is a serious abuse of the lawyer's rights . . . without seeing the case documents it will be impossible to make proper preparations," she said.
"They know this case is full of holes, so they don't want to give the lawyer time to find them."
Officials in Longhui could not be reached for comment yesterday, a public holiday, but have previously declined to comment on the action against Mr Yang.
Ms Gong said her husband was in poor physical condition after being held in local custody since January.
