And then Caijing had its first lesson in what happens when it goes too far.
Zhao Hongxia had been lauded on the internet as an "anti-corruption heroine", Caijing website reports.
Caijing, he said, had achieved a stature that put it out of reach of lower-ranking bureaucrats.
On June 9th, Caijing published a twelve-page investigative report that was cool and definitive.
Within the hour, the first Caijing journalist was on a flight to Sichuan, followed by nine more.
As Caijing grows in prominence, her staff is spending more time in front of crowds or overseas.
But, so far, Caijing has avoided the fate of the Southern Metropolitan Daily, a tabloid in Guangdong province.
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Nearly half of the purchasing capital came from an untraceable source, Caijing discovered.
After Caijing attempted to publish a brief follow-up, authorities ordered the story removed from the Web site and the newsstands.
Morgan Stanley ( MS - news - people ) and now a columnist with Caijing, a Beijing magazine.
Caijing revealed that, while legions of small-time investors lost millions, insiders had been tipped off in advance and unloaded their shares.
In many cases, once Xinhua makes a brief announcement of an official being arrested, Caijing is ready to publish a full story.
It is a skill she will increasingly need as she takes Caijing beyond financial scandals into more dangerous territory commenting on government policy.
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Still, the reservoir behind the dam was emptied to relieve pressure on the structure, the state-sponsored Chinese business news magazine Caijing reported.
Caijing is a woodpecker, she says, forever hammering at a tree, trying not to knock it down but to make it grow straighter.
Late last year, Mr. Liu was accused of corruption by a high-ranking editor at Caijing Magazine, a respected financial magazine, over Sina Corp.
SARS, Caijing never entirely retreated to the confines of business journalism, though today it benefits from the perception that it is simply policing the economy.
Caijing reported that China plans to order banks to post investment products on their balance sheets, which may force banks to increase their capital reserves.
Caijing, a Beijing business magazine, has pointed out that over the three years, the central government's annual average share of this would be about 111 billion yuan.
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When, on June 8th, Xinhua issued a one-sentence report saying that the mayor of Shenzhen had been detained in a corruption probe, Caijing posted an in-depth piece twentynine minutes later.
On May 12, 2008, Hu Shuli, the founding editor of the biweekly magazine Caijing, was hosting a ceremony for scholarship recipients at a hotel in the mountains west of Beijing.
Luo Changping, the journalist, was able to publish his allegations on weibo, rather than in the print version of the Caijing magazine, because the two outlets are ruled by separate groups.
At a time when the American print media is in decline, the Chinese press is growing, and Caijing is the first Chinese publication with the prospect of becoming a world-class news organization.
Since 1998, when Hu established Caijing, with two computers and a borrowed conference room, she has guided the magazine with near-perfect pitch for how much candor and provocation the regime will tolerate.
This, and powerful friends (she counts Wu Jinglian, China's top economist, among her mentors), have honed Ms Hu's instincts when it comes to assessing whether Caijing's latest scoop will push the authorities too far.
ECONOMIST: How scared should corporate China be of Hu Shuli?
Hu currently heads a Caijing rival, Caixin.
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Undeterred, Caijing went to press last week with an edition full of provocative articles calling for political reform and press freedom, and a cover-story on a Shanghai scandal that the government is trying to suppress.
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