It’s a groundbreaking publication that broke the news of the arrest of China’s richest man, was the most overt critic of plans to install internet filtering software on home computers, and the first to push for the state to break its silence over the severe acute respiratory syndrome health crisis of 2003.

It is the Chinese magazine Caijing. The name means “finance and business” and its primary focus, since its founding in 1998, has been the economy.

That has allowed the bi-weekly magazine to run stories that are often trenchant without falling foul of the propaganda tsars, a mix of content that has made it the most influential business publication in China. But Caijing has now run into trouble.

The magazine’s general manager, chief of advertising and some 60 staff on the business side have resigned.

The question many are now asking is whether this mass departure will affect editorial control, and the position of its esteemed editor-in-chief.

It is the strong personality, powerful contacts and political antennae displayed by Hu Shuli that have enabled her magazine to survive, and to prosper, in one of the most carefully controlled media markets in the world.

Rumours are rife that Ms Hu may be preparing to leave to set up a new magazine, or that she is locked in fraught negotiations with the publisher to ensure that Caijing can live on without yet more interference in its editorial content, and with more money for its investigative reporters.

The magazine she founded with two computers now has a staff of 180 journalists. Its circulation is around 220,000, and it is believed to be turning a big profit for its publisher. Just last month it reached a deal with Hong Kong tycoon Richard Li to start a financial wire service with ambitions to become a Reuters for China.

One of Ms Hu’s great talents, apart from her journalistic prowess, has been her ability to sense just how much open comment and investigative reporting the censors can tolerate. That is no easy feat. Caijing’s success in expanding and prospering for more than a decade is testimony not only to Ms Hu’s courage, but to her caution. Caijing is a ground-breaking publication in Chinese terms. In most other countries its reports would be regarded as more mundane.

But the media is the last bastion of Communist Party control. Propaganda authorities regard the role of the media as to support and nurture party rule and not to confront. Caijing has trodden a path somewhere in between.

Her hard-hitting editorial in June questioning the correctness of the government’s plan to force every computer user to install a state-approved internet filter brought reports that that issue had been pulped. In the event, it did appear on newsstands.

A report that uncovered insider trading resulted in jail terms for powerful company executives. But another that flew too close to the money-making schemes of well-connected members of the elite was ordered to be destroyed.

Caijing has become known for compiling reports that it can run as soon as it sees signs that some controversial issue has, at last, been allowed by the state to be exposed. When the mayor of the model boomtown of Shenzhen was arrested for corruption, Caijing issued a full report on his misdemeanours within the hour. The piece had clearly been well-prepared.

The turmoil at Caijing, whether Ms Hu stays or goes, highlights the challenges of trying to push the limits in a country without media freedom.

Li Datong was the editor of Freezing Point, a must-read magazine among the educated elite for its penetrating articles on topical issues. It was closed in early 2006. Progress in China towards greater media freedom was moving at a glacial pace, he said.

He added: “Freedom is not given. Journalists have to fight for it. If you are always careful, if every time a leaf falls from a tree you’re afraid it will land on your head then you will never be free.”

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