2013 Southern Weekly incident

2013 Southern Weekly incident or 2013 Southern Weekend incident was a conflict between the Propaganda Department of Guangdong Province and Southern Weekly in press freedom, regarding a New Year's special editorial that was changed significantly under the pressure from the propaganda officers bypassing the normal publication flow. The newsroom staff went on strike to protest against the censorship. The incident also caused demonstrations outside the gates of the Southern Weekly newspaper in Guangzhou, China. and drew attention of many overseas Chinese. According to Southern Weekly editors, the incident wasn't a coincidence because 1,034 of their stories were censored one way or another in 2012 alone. Because of the incident, keywords such as Southern Weekend, Tuo Zhen have become sensitive words and filtered by the Chinese firewall.

The Southern Weekly is a part of the Nanfang Media Group (Chinese: 南方报业传媒集团), which is a provincial government-owned media corporation. The same as any government-owned corporation, its top leader is the party secretary. However, unlike many other government-owned media, Southern Weekly is known for investigative journalism, testing the limits of free speech in the country.

In January 2013, it was reported that under the command of Tuo Zhen, Southern Weekly was forced to add a provided commentary glorifying the Chinese Communist Party on its annual new year editorial, which was intended to call for proper implementation of the country's constitution. The new year editorial originally had the title of Dream of China, Dream of Constitutionalism (Chinese: 中国梦，宪政梦), calling for the cementing of rights into a constitution, but was replaced with praise of the Chinese Communist Party.

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