A fake news story about sales of steamed dumplings stuffed with meat-flavoured chopped up cardboard has led to China’s top official in charge of propaganda being forced to make a rare apology.

The spoof story has also had huge ramifications for the media industry that is already tightly controlled by the state - Beijing police have detained the television reporter said to be responsible and his colleagues are having to write 2,000 word self-criticisms to show they will not make the same error.

Li Changchun, a member of the nine-man ruling Standing Committee of the Communist Party’s Politburo, made the behind-closed-doors apology as part of a far-reaching purge of the media after the Beijing Television report last month.

Such a self-criticism is rare and could lead to humiliation for Mr Li as the party prepares for its 17th Congress in the autumn when a new Politburo will be appointed.

The report was found to have been made by Zi Beijia, a temporary reporter for Beijing Television, who has been arrested. In the concocted report he said steamed pork dumpling makers soaked cardboard in caustic soda to soften it and then flavoured it with pork juice to make the bun filling.

The report was a sensation, emerging when China is facing international criticism for exports of sub-standard or tainted food products.

But the ramifications after it was revealed that Mr Zi’s report was carefully choreographed have been even greater.

Other Chinese journalists said it was not clear what charges Mr Zi would face, but these could include disturbing public order and spreading terror reports – both of which could mean he faces several years in jail.

Mr Zi’s story has had immediate consequences for his colleagues, already operating in an arena tightly controlled by the state and its propaganda authorities.

Reporters at major television stations will be required to undergo strict re-education classes if their first two efforts at self-criticism are not good enough.

At least six senior executives at Beijing Television, including the head of the station, have been reprimanded, received demerits or been sacked. The station made an unprecedented on-air apology for the fake report.

Eager to limit bad news in the run-up to the Party Congress at which a new generation of leaders could emerge, the party’s Publicity Department, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and the State Press and Publication Administration have issued a circular to all news departments saying anyone who causes public anxiety or tarnishes China’s image would be harshly dealt with or even prosecuted.

The order will make it even more difficult and dangerous for enterprising journalists, such as the provincial reporter who broke the news that illegal brick kilns were employing children and slave labourers, to publish their work.

But the steamed dumpling report is far from the first hoax to make it into print or onto the small screen in China. In 2006, a newspaper reported that street peddlers were injecting sugared water into watermelons to boost profits. A year earlier, a newspaper published a story citing a Chinese businessman as saying water from Russia’s Lake Baikal would be imported to Beijing. And just last March, a newspaper said banana trees in southern China had been infected with a disease known as ‘banana cancer’.

Times Recommends

• Both sides blame US for worsening relations
• Stieg Larsson: losing the plot over his cash
• Odd creature paralysed by incompatible parts