Translated by Pang Lei
Original [Chinese]

Hu Shuli and the vast majority of her editorial team have left Caijing magazine and website. They've left both a high-end financial magazine into which they have poured more than ten years of effort and also a rapidly growing web site which is was one of the leading financial websites in the country.

As someone who works in the same industry I feel a slight tinge of sadness, but also a sincere sense of respect for those who work in the same industry as I do and who share the same sense of respect for journalism.

As none of those involved have yet come forward to reveal all the details, I can only base my attempts to work out the main causes of the conflict on the small snippets of information that have emerged.

I see three main factors that have led to the dispute: one is the the issue of management's approach to the censorship of content, the second is that the company's developement had reached a bottleneck and that those seeking to expand further were demanding the resources needed to support this development, thirdly, there was a call for the profits to be distributed more fairly in the direction of the editorial team.

As far as I know, the salary of Caijing journalists is not that high, they're also forbidden from accepting any kind payments for attending press briefings or other events (something that most Chinese journalists do to support their base income), still many talented journalists, attracted by Caijing's unique philosophy, joined their team.

Looking at it from this perspective, a quarrel over the distribution of profits is unlikely to have been the main cause of the conflict. Caijing had a strong reputation and young journalists were not attracted by the short term benefits of a high salary but rather they were attracted by the prestige associated with working at the magazine and the positive effect that it would have on their future career prospects.

Although income may well have been a bone of contention for the more experienced of Caijing's reporters and editors, it was unlikely to have been of such a concern as to set-off the dispute that split the publication.

Many outstanding journalists who have returned from studies abroad were also happy to take up a position at Caijing, it seems obvious that they're not attracted by the pay.

As a team leader, Hu Shuli is likely to have argued with management about salaries on behalf of her editorial team, but this obviously wasn't enough of an issue to lead to the current split.

The second factor is related to the current plight of traditional media.

The arrival of the Internet has already forced print media in a precarious position.

Becuase of this, Hu Shuli placed high hopes in Caijing's website, and had expectations of using new media technology to gradually escape from the restrictions of Caijing's bi-weekly publishing schedule.

In the past, media circles swirled with rumors that Caijing was going to become a weekly, but in the end, nothing came of it and the company began to plough resources and personel into developing their Web platform.

The rapid increase in traffic visting Caijing's website over the past year is a direct result of the huge investment of people and resources that Hu Shuli channeled into the magazine's website.

But running a website is like burning money - the thirst for information is almost endless.

Hu Shuli and her team expected the company's major shareholder SEEC (Stock Exchange Executive Council) to invest more resources or to allow the introduction of third-party investor.

If only it was purely a question of attracting capital, or of simply asking the SEEC to invest more capital into the online presence of the magazine, it's unlikely that the dispute would have escalated to such a degree.

Businessmen have always known that harmony is what matters: when two side work together they both win, when they're opposed, both sides get hurt.

Hu Shuli's team hoped to take this opportunity to achieve employee ownership of shares in the company. On the one had it would mean that the management team would have reasonable control of the company and thus ensure editorial independence, secondly, after all their years of hard work in building up the reputation of the magazine, the team deserved a reasonable reward.

A close relatioship exists between employee stock ownership and editorial independence, when the editorial team has a stake in the destiny of their own publication, then they have more control, and only then may a publication be considered truly independent.

In many ways Caijing's situation was similar to that of high level executives working at Shenzhen-listed property developer Vanke and insurance giant Ping An, who were able to negotiate stock options in their firms, but this time things worked out differently.

If it wasn't for Hu Shuli's strong committment to an independent editorial policy, (although of course the company's management also provided a lot of support to Caijing's growth), it is difficult to imagine that a publication of Caijing's calibre could have emerged in China.

Therefore, the one thing that Hu Shuli was unable to accept was censorship.

The magazine's management, under pressure from regulatory authorities, or perhaps relying on the excuse of "regulatory pressure," were asking for stronger censorship of the magazine's content, this undoubtedly was a step too far as far as Hu Shuli was concerned.

The success of both Hu Shuli and Caijing, lay in her ability to clearly understand the size of the cage and also the position of her "bird" within the cage.

But this departure, while bearing all the hall-marks of a dispute between labor and management, in the context of China's media industry, has become even more complicated.

We can imagine that it was precisely a combination of all the factors outlined above that finally forced Hu Shuli's team to reluctantly bid farwell to Caijing.

Empires are always brought down from the inside.

Many working in the media have been saddened that these sudden changes have taken place at such a high-profile publication as Caijing.

As to the Hu Shuli team's next project - Caixin - I personally have one small wish: that it be capable, like The Wall Street Journal in the process of being taken over by Murdoch, of producing an article about what took place during the Caijing split.

I believe that such reports will help the new publication to become an instant hit.