Government orders closure of China Development Brief

China Development Brief (CDB), the foreign-funded newsletter that focuses on development and human rights issues in the country, has been ordered by the government to cease publication. Officials from the Beijing Municipality Public Security Bureau, the Beijing Municipality Statistical Bureau and the Beijing Municipality Cultural Marketing General Legal Implementation Team visited the newsletter's office in Beijing on July 4. They interviewed staff for about three hours before demanding that it close down, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing Nicholas Young, CDB's founding editor. About 5,000 Chinese-language copies of the newsletter are distributed on a bimonthly basis, with electronic versions in English published every month. It is popular with international nongovernmental organizations working in China and operates on a nonprofit basis. CDB has come under closer scrutiny these past couple of years, though Young said he did not know what led to this decisive action being taken. He suggested it might be part of a wider political clampdown ahead of China's Communist Party Congress in the fall.