In the last two decades, Chinese journalists have begun to test the limits of their system. The liberalisation of the economy, including media ownership, has created a range of media in which the power of the Communist Party and the central authorities is reduced. At the same time, the need to make a profit – and thus to appeal to a wide readership – has become a key criterion. Investigations, especially of those issues which attract widespread popular criticism and concern – is generally popular.

Doing investigative journalism – probing below the surface on stories, such as municipal corruption or illegal development – is a delicate matter. At one end, where the investigations are seen by the authorities (or even encouraged by the authorities) as being in the public interest, and thus have protection at a high level, they are usually without major difficulties. If, however, they are not so protected, and are undertaken by a newspaper or broadcast channel on their own volition, then the risk of a push back from the authorities is high.

The project will focus on the group of investigative reporters who pioneered and developed a new kind of journalism. It will do so through the individual accounts of a number of the members – how they became journalists, why they did so, what impelled them to work at the frontline of journalistic inquiry.

The project will do this through telling the stories of their stories. It will see:

• what the reporters wish to investigate;
• what preparations and arrangements they must make to do it;
• how far editors must negotiate with the authorities to be allowed to assign reporters to investigative or controversial stories – and with whom they must negotiate;
• what barriers they meet in doing so;
• how much of what they discover can be published, and how much left out;
• what effect their stories have;
• how far they have found it easier, or more difficult, to investigate as time goes on;
• what the forbidden areas are, and what areas can be negotiated;
• what the authorities demand of an investigation which they allow to be published;
• what status investigative reporters enjoy within their organisations – and in society generally;
• how investigations, and investigative reporters, are regarded by the public.

Further, it will also show:

• what models Chinese journalists have in mind when developing a practice of investigations;
• which media are permitted to be radical – and which are not, and why;
• which media carry the most weight with the authorities, and which with the public;
• what the public thinks about investigations;
• how far investigations and revelations have, or have not, become part of the standard news agenda;
• the main differences between the Communist Party media, and the commercial, or “metropolitan”, media;
• who the main gatekeepers for the media are, what are their criteria and how they differ by region or by publication.

The result we aim for is that of a unique record of working journalists in China. Through that record, we will develop a narrative of how journalism works and is controlled in a society which is authoritarian, with a monopolistic party – but which, by partly privatising the media, has had to allow space never before enjoyed by journalism in a Communist state.