China's "citizen" reporters dodge censors and critics

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's muzzled press and burgeoning Internet have given citizen reporters an audience and an opportunity -- however fleeting -- to spread news quicker than government censors can control it.

But the ability of bloggers to dodge censors and provide a voice for China's poor and disadvantaged by covering news events Beijing would rather be left unreported has also given some bloggers the chance to profit from disseminating a rare commodity in China -- uncensored news.

Zhou Shuguang, who blogs under the name of "Zola", is a citizen reporter who found that the initial admiration he received from Internet surfers for championing the downtrodden soon turned to scorn for taking their money.

Zhou, a 26-year-old vegetable-seller from a small town in China's heartland province of Hunan, became famous after blogging about his experiences "covering" a David-and-Goliath battle between developers and residents in the booming southwestern city of Chongqing.

"Originally I went to Chongqing with selling vegetables in mind. I thought that if I could get famous, then business would be better," said Zhou, who was lauded, if inaccurately, as China's "first citizen reporter" in local media reports.

The moniker was enough for the slight, bespectacled former IT student to be solicited by others battling eviction orders across China's vast heartland, where cash-strapped local governments often collude with developers and hired thugs to seize land from powerless residents.

Zhou, who took some 7,000 yuan ($940) in donations to finance his Chongqing trip, has also taken money from residents, he insists, to cover the cost of travel and reporting on their property disputes.

"It's travel, it's entertainment. It's not work," Zhou said during an interview at a hotel in Beijing.

For desperate residents facing eviction from their homes, and unable to draw attention to their plights in China's controlled press, it's a price worth paying.