China’s increasingly well-off and cyber-linked middle-class has been shocked by revelations of brutal abuse of slave labourers, some of them children, in filthy brick kilns in poorer hinterland provinces. They are rather less surprised that no senior official has yet to lose his job in connection with the scandal.

Tales of the dark underbelly of China’s economic boom surface with a certain regularity in a media that is carefully and constantly controlled by the state censors. Many more are the ones that get away. The tale of the slave labourers of Shanxi and Henan provinces is just such a story.

The fact that no senior official has resigned, or been fired, to take responsibility is commonplace in China compared with the daring of the regional television station that exposed an industry already in existence for about a decade.

The expose resulted from a combination of access to the internet by poor farmers, the willingness of a journalist in central Henan province to follow up the story and a decision by China’s leaders to allow state media to publicise a darker side of China's success story. The first reports appeared in Beijing newspapers just over two weeks ago. Since then the scandal has gained momentum until it finally appeared on China Central Television (CCTV) news – watched each evening by hundreds of millions of people across China.

China’s more outspoken newspapers, including even the mouthpiece of the Communist Party – the People’s Daily – have all run commentaries questioning the levels of collusion between kiln owners, police and government officials that had hidden the abuses for as long as a decade. The news could only have appeared on the main CCTV news with the approval of someone very senior in China’s leadership.

And since then the tone has changed. Enough investigative journalism from the fastnesses of poor central Henan. Last weekend, China’s censors issued an order to ease up on the bad news. Newspapers have been told to carry only state-approved reports. They put a stop to the work of Henan television journalist Fu Zhenzhong who took up the cause of 400 families who posted an internet appeal and who them went undercover and secretly filmed Shanxi’s brick kilns and accompanied distraught parents seeking their missing sons.

CCTV received notification that it was time for positive news that showed the government in a good light – arresting the kiln operators, showing the police raiding underground factories that have been operating in their patch for years. News websites were told: “Regarding the Shanxi underground brick kilns even, all websites should reinforce positive propaganda, put more emphasis on the forceful measures that the central and local governments have already taken.”

It’s a well-known pattern in China: reveal a little of the realities of life to show that the government knows, and more important that it cares and is taking action. Follow that with tales of success and enforcement of justice and then allow the issue to fade quietly away. However, that method becomes more difficult in an age where journalists want to report the real story and where debate online can be hard to silence.

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