There are more signs that the Chinese government is cracking down on journalists and, more broadly, press freedom.

The South China Morning Post reports that Liu Hu, an investigative reporter with the Guangzhou-based newspaper New Express, was taken away by police on Saturday on the charge of "fabricating and spreading rumors," what the paper called "a catch-all charge used to cover acts disrupting social order."

According to published reports, Liu's wife said he was taken away from their home in Chongqing along with two computers and several bank cards whose accounts were later closed.

In July, Liu had alleged on the popular Sina Weibo microblogging site that Ma Zhengqi, deputy director of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, had been negligent in his public duties while working in Chongqing. Liu "also shared information that raised questions over possible corruption by other senior government officials. His microblogs were later deleted," the Post reported.

The New York Times reported last week that a censorship battle between authorities and the rebellious Southern Weekend newspaper in Guangdong province had apparently prompted Chinese leaders to issue a secret memo warning of the dangers of democracy, a free press and human rights.

The memo, known as Document No. 9, warned of subversive trends that could weaken the Community Party's control, including constitutional democracy, human rights, press freedom, civic participation, pro-market "neo-liberalism" and criticisms of the party's often bloody history.

In China, censorship and government control of the media is routine. But since the memo was issued, party-run publications have taken an even tougher line in denouncing democratic values. Meanwhile, censors have beefed up efforts to block dissenting websites and several prominent rights activists have been detained.

Some experts had been optimistic that President Xi Jinping, who took the reins of China's Communist Party in 2012, might expand reforms and allow more Western-style freedoms to take root in the world's most populous nation. Such hopes were buoyed when authorities backed down in the standoff with the Southern Weekend paper earlier this year, agreeing not to vet its content before publication.

But Arthur Waldron, a China expert and professor of international relations at the University of Pennsylvania, said in an e-mail interview that the government's latest get-tough approach "is all bad news, unexpected too, especially for those who are hopeful."

Waldron said China "is in for trouble to be sure. Right now they are buying time - buying time, no more - with much heralded milli-reforms of no real significance. Sooner or later the earth will move under their feet, as it did, to the surprise of all, in Russia."

In the long run, Waldron added, China's attempt to take a harder line won't work.

"If the iron glove worked, it would have done so decades ago, in the 1950s, and all would be in order today. It would have worked in Tibet and Xinjiang and against all sorts of dissidents, the religious, etc. Taking off the gloves won't work - they have been off more or less since 1950. The asymptotic theory of gradual reform... is just not right. It will happen more or less all at once."

Waldron also said he suspected that Xi "may overreach - he is after all a kid born with a silver baton in his mouth, who may not be able to order his equals in the elite and his subjects as easily as he thinks."

Last year China was deemed one of the world's worst offenders on a list of countries that imprison journalists. And when a high-speed train crash killed dozens of people in 2011, the government cracked down on news outlets that criticized how officials handled the tragedy.

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