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New Century Weekly
December 11, 2009

New Century Weekly
December 21, 2009

New Century Weekly
January 1, 2010

Century Weekly
January 4, 2010. Image: Source

Hu Shuli, China's "most formidable editor," in charge of Caijing until late last year, took over New Century Weekly (新世纪周刊) and published her first issue under the banner Caixin Media (财新传媒) on January 4, 2009. The magazine, as previously, is published by Hainan Reform and Development Research Institution (海南发改研究院) joint with TeamWork (北京天意华鼎元广告公司), an advertising company, but the masthead in the new magazine reflects Hu Shuli's Caijing team, down to the journalists and the managing editors.

As soon as the news leaked that Hu Shuli was going to edit New Century Weekly (which under the previous Caijing editor is now renamed Century Weekly, but still keeping its Chinese title) there were accusations that she had not fulfilled her duties to Sun Yat-sen University, where she was rumored to take over its journalism department in November 2009, soon after her departure from Caijing magazine.

Outrage also followed when 21 old employees of New Century Weekly reportedly applied for labor arbitration after rumors that the old team would be laid off and replaced by Hu's team. On the New Century Weekly Sina blog, a final-sounding post was uploaded on January 6:

To all readers, colleagues and friends who have shown concern in light of the recent situation:

The 21 of us express deep thanks! Today we reached a solution with New Century Weekly, the 21 of us will try our hand at news again... Our colleagues in the editorial department will help the new colleagues all they can, in order to finish freelance payments. We trust that New Century Weekly is a responsible magazine. Thanks for the hard work you have done for us, giving us many ideas [as to what to do]. We have separated, but we are still together.

We also sincerely wish New Century Weekly the best of luck, hoping that it will have a limitless future, and we hope that our readers will keeping supporting this magazine, with 20 years of history. *

Reactions to the change of editorship came in the form of newspaper editorials as well as blog posts. Ten Years Chopping Timber (十年砍柴) is a reporter at Legal Daily: he wrote in an Southern Metropolis Daily editorial to comment on the move and gave the conclusion that no-one should blame Hu Shuli. An ex-deputy editor of New Century Weekly, Wen Zhang (文章), also blogged about his reaction to the takeover: it satisfied him, he wrote. Both posts are translated below.

Century Weekly (新世纪周刊) under Hu Shuli's Caixin Media's is now published online in English. As well as this publication, though, Hu also posts a Weekly English Digest in PDF form on her Sun Yat-sen University website.

A few months after Hu Shuli and her team left Caijing, almost the entire team has entered New Century Weekly. I am persistent in thinking that Hu leaving Caijing should not be made more tragic than it really is. Having Hu edit Caijing should be seen as a miracle in today's China, having this miracle live for so long, perhaps Hu Shuli, her team and even her readers are still not resigned to it, but it still survived longer than expected.