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BEIJING Hundreds of supporters of the reform-minded Guangdong newspaper Southern Weekly staged a rare public protest against state censorship outside the papers offices Monday, while prominent business tycoons, opinion makers and film stars used their microblogging accounts to demand greater press freedom in China.

Meanwhile, several of the newspapers editors and reporters said they were going on strike, which would be the first such action by journalists against official press restrictions in more than two decades.

This is actually something pretty amazing, said Hung Huang, a publisher, writer and blogger. Its the first time the media is protesting against censorship. This is the first time they took action and said, Were not going to take this anymore. ... Somehow, this was the straw that broke the camels back.

The highly unusual protests sprung from what is being called the New Years Day incident, in which Southern Weeklys journalists say their front-page New Years message to readers expressing a dream for a constitutional government in China was substantially rewritten and watered down, without the knowledge or consent of the editors, by Guangdong provinces top Communist Party propaganda official, Tuo Zhen.

Tuo has not spoken about his role in rewriting the piece and could not be reached for comment. Several journalists and media executives said that even under Chinas tight, long-standing control of the print media, it would be far out of the ordinary for a propaganda official to so blatantly interfere in the editorial process without telling top editors.

The incident grew more confusing Sunday, when a statement appeared at 9:20 p.m. on the Southern Weeklys Sina Weibo account, the Chinese version of Twitter. The post said the New Years message published Jan. 2 was written by the papers management team, and it denied the online reports that it had been rewritten.

About an hour later, angry Southern Weekly editors and staff members used a separate microblogging account, for the papers economic news sections, to charge that Southern Weeklys official Sina Weibo account had been forcibly confiscated by the government and that the statement posted on it was untrue. Dozens of Southern Weekly editors and staff members later signed an online statement saying the paper had been forced to give up the password to the official account.

The battle over censorship spilled into the public arena Monday, as an estimated 400 people heeded an online call for protest, according to witnesses and online reports . People showed up holding roses and white and yellow chrysanthemums the traditional flower of mourning in China and some wore masks covering their mouths. Others held handwritten signs calling for freedom of speech.

We laid flowers at the gate to Southern Weekly, said Song Bingyi, a protester. There were white roses, white chrysanthemum, red roses and yellow chrysanthemum there. But once we put down the flowers, plainclothes police came to confiscate them all.

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Furor over censorship spreading in China