"About 100 editors and reporters from three departments started striking last night," said a journalist at the Beijing News, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution.

The paper's editor-in-chief, Yang Bin, and two deputy editors, Sun Xuedong and Li Duoyu, were removed from their posts Wednesday after they were called into a meeting by the heads of the parent company, the conservative Guangming Daily.

Beijing News, or Xin Jing Bao, is also partly owned by the relatively liberal Southern Daily organisation, and most of its top editorial staff had worked at the group's outspoken Guangzhou-based Southern Metropolitan Daily.

The Beijing-based paper has a team of 300 editorial staff.

Guangming Daily denied Friday that Yang was sacked, saying he had been transferred back to the Southern Daily group, where he used to work.

"This is a normal transfer, not a dismissal. He has been transferred to the Southern Daily," said a staff member at the director's office at Guangming Daily who declined to give her name.

She declined to say what his new post was. The Southern Daily group refused to comment.

Strikes at China's newspapers -- which by law are required to be governed by an official body -- were previously unheard of. The state press is regarded as a vital organ of the ruling Communist Party's propaganda network.

Sources said the Guangming Daily had decided to replace the editors with personnel from its own publication, which is widely considered loyal to the Communist Party.

The reason for the editors' oustings was not known, but the paper has a reputation as one of the Chinese capital's most daring.

It has printed a string of sensitive stories, including on police beatings of villagers, as well as routinely run scathing editorials on a host of problems such as corruption.

The Beijing News journalist said many colleagues would defy orders to return to work until management provided an explanation for Yang's ousting.

"We are really worried about who is going to come next," the journalist said. "The editor-in-chief is the soul of a newspaper."

Jiao Guobiao, a former Peking University journalism lecturer who lost his job after he criticised the Communist Party's propaganda department last year, said the move was just another step in China's tight control of ideology.

"The newspaper has become successful, so some people feel uncomfortable about it... and want to do something about it," Jiao said.

In its Friday edition, the Beijing News carried more stories written by the official Xinhua news agency than usual. The names of the top editorial staff were dropped from the front page.

It was not the first time the paper has come under suppression by Chinese authorities.

Yang's predecessor and one of the founders of the Beijing News, Cheng Yizhong, was arrested in March last year on allegations of embezzlement of state-owned assets but was released five months later without charge.

People familiar with the case said the arrest of Cheng, who was also the former editor-in-chief of the Southern Metropolitan Daily, was linked to its publication of several reports that offended government officials.

When Cheng led the Southern Metropolitan Daily in 2003, it exposed the SARS outbreak after a months-long government cover-up and printed an in-depth report of police wrongdoing that caused a national uproar.

China's President Hu Jintao and a new set of younger top-tier leaders who came to power about two years ago have been regularly criticised by rights groups and dissidents for taking a tough stance on freedom of the press.

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