China's Few Investigative Journalists Face Increasing Challenges

In China, a country where all media are nominally owned by the state, the government invests vast amounts of money and labor into controlling information.

Having any investigative journalists at all is no mean feat.

But in Hunan, the journalism can be as spicy as the chili pepper-laden cuisine for which the province is known.

"Hunan produces the best investigative journalists in the country," says Luo Changping, who until 2014 was one of them. One reason for this, he says, is that "no matter how poor people are in Hunan, they're very concerned about politics."

In recent years, though, Luo and other members of the influential "Hunan gang" of investigative journalists — which, in its heyday, brought down powerful political figures and exposed human rights abuses — have quit the business.

To find out why,