A popular Chinese tabloid last week revamped its two-month-old opinion page and dropped the section's editor, a move which many believe has to do with the renewal of its publishing permit due by the end of this month.

The thrice-weekly Powerful News started its opinion page as a broadsheet pull-out last October. Circulation then went up by one-third to some 30,000 copies per issue.

Called 'Powerful Opinion', the pull-out was a new avenue of expression for some 90 writers who stopped writing for four major Chinese dailies after two of them, Nanyang Siang Pau and China Press , were taken over by MCA's Huaren Holdings last year.

Following the revamp, the section editor Wong Chin Huat quit on Dec 29. The pull-out has since been reduced to a two-page section in the tabloid.

When contacted, Wong said the revamp was due to "some non-market factor" but did not elaborate on that.

In his last editorial, he wrote: "...(the non-market factor) is something that everyone should understand...".

Wong was a key figure in the Committee Against Takeover of Nanyang Press (CAT), an organisation instrumental for the nationwide boycott campaign which slashed sales of the two newly MCA-acquired newspapers by 10 percent last year.

Annual licence

The unexpected and inexplicable 'revamp' appears all the more suspicious as the tabloid has to renew its publishing permit with the Home Ministry before Jan 27.

The Printing Presses and Publications Act 1984 requires periodicals to apply for a licence annually. Any publication without the permit can be charged and its publisher faces a three-year jail-term and a maximum fine of RM20,000 if convicted.

The permit application is handled by a special department supervised by two deputy home ministers, one of them MCA's Chor Chee Heung who is aligned to party president and Team A leader Dr Ling Liong Sik.

Sources close to Powerful News said the publisher has been "advised" by the ministry officials to revamp the tabloid's opinion page in early December despite its soaring popularity among keen readers of Chinese politics.

"There were indications that the publishing permit may not be renewed and the owner started to worry," said a columnist who requested anonymity.

When contacted, tabloid owner John Pattist Chong refused to comment on the matter beyond saying, "It is not the time to talk about it now."

Columnist Lee Kian Kiong also had his column dropped. Lee was the chief reporter with China Press before he was pressured to leave the daily last August when the new management came in.

He told malaysiakini he believed that the end of his column was a result of "political influence" from external parties.

His weekly column had been critical of local Chinese newspapers, particularly Sin Chew Jit Poh which is published by timber tycoon Tiong Hiew King.

Tiong was widely speculated to be the buyer who would hold a controlling stake in Nanyang Press Holdings from MCA in a grand scheme to build his Chinese media empire.

Contributors barred

Apart from Lee, other regular contributors who were barred in the section include MCA Youth acting secretary-general Liow Tiong Lai aligned to Team B, DAP publicity secretary Ronnie Liu, and Keadilan Youth committee member Diong Chi Tzuoh.

Even MCA Youth chief Ong Tee Keat, who was about to start writing for the opinion section at the time the revamp took place, was told that his articles should be limited to only classical Chinese literature and should not concern politics.

The tabloid itself has also featured news regularly on Team B.

When an investigating committee blamed Ong for the fracas at the Youth Aug 3 annual general assembly last year, the tabloid questioned the committee's objectivity in its front-page news entitled '10 doubts about the veteran committee's judgment'.

Chinese newspapers have long enjoyed relatively higher editorial independence but media academics noted that they have increasingly attracted the government's negative attention in recent years.

Last year, Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad openly called Nanyang Siang Pau and China Press "instruments of opposition" which have caused the defeat of the ruling coalition in the Lunas by-election in year 2000 in Kedah.