Chinese paper disbands investigative team

A prominent Chinese government newspaper has disbanded its investigative reporting team, which won recognition for its aggressive muckraking, amid a wider clampdown in China on the media and human-rights activists, the Wall Street Journal reported. Reporters at the China Economic Times said the decision was announced at a meeting convened by the newspaper’s Communist Party Committee on Monday as part of a push towards more economics-focused reporting. The two-year-old investigative team was led by journalist Wang Keqing and had pushed political boundaries in recent years by reporting on topics ranging from the fatal mismanagement of vaccines by provincial authorities in central China last year to the mysterious death of a village activist found crushed beneath a truck earlier this year. China Economic Times is published by the Development Research Center, a think tank controlled by China’s State Council.