Jim Clancy: Rupert Wingfield-Hayes joins us live by satellite from Beijing. You named the women who were involved. Were there any repercussions? Were you concerned about them?

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes (BBC correspondent, Beijing): I was extremely concerned about the safety of the women who had agreed to go on camera. We said to them very clearly before we did the interviews that potentially this could cause repercussions for them. And we have stayed in touch with them since. But it was very much their choice - they wanted this story to get out and to be told to the outside world. And the foreign media here today in China is part of the equation. It is seen as a channel by which people who can't get their voice heard anywhere else - either in the Chinese media or through the Chinese courts or with the Chinese government - can try and get their story heard.

Jim Clancy: What would be the likelihood that this kind of story would ever air on Phoenix Television? Is this even a story any more?

Wen Guang Shao: We did a story recently about a confrontation in a village, and our reporters were detained by the local authorities right upon their arrival. This was a dispute over a piece of land that the government wanted to use for construction purposes, whereas the villagers didn't want that to happen.

Apparently, another village that had agreed to this - and it was a very big piece of land - became very upset because they yielded to the government whereas the other village didn't. So they were motivated to go into the other village, because of a historical dispute over many other things going back many years, and they beat up the people there.

Our reporters heard about it, and went in, without proper paperwork, and they were detained. We had to negotiate with Hebei province, down to the county level, to get the reporters out - on the condition that we would not release the story. But as soon as the reporters came back with the footage, the senior executives decided that we had every right to run the story, so we did run it.

Jim Clancy: You can decide that, and get away with it?

Wen Guang Shao: Yes. But this was a decision taken in Hong Kong, and we ran the story from Hong Kong by satellite into China.

Jim Clancy: Did they black it out?

Wen Guang Shao: No.

Jim Clancy: I want to get an idea of the experience of other people. What are the red flags for the international media?

Jaime FlorCruz: My experience is a few “Ts” - Taiwan, Tibet. So when you use faces of the Taiwanese president or the Dalai Lama, they black it out. Human rights, falun gong. Those are the predictable taboos.

Jim Clancy: But Phoenix News covers Taiwan - you cover their democracy, their elections.

Wen Guang Shao: Taiwan is no problem for us, because we have a huge presence in Taiwan.

Jim Clancy: Why do you think that is?

Wen Guang Shao: Somehow the Chinese government thinks that our reporting is accurate and fair and objective and timely, and they rely on us as a credible source of information about Taiwan politics. In the past, when the Chinese media reported things on Taiwan, according to the government guidelines they couldn't even mention the names of the candidates. They would just say: “Some people within the ruling party say this and that about independence,” without naming names. This became very confusing, and not really very good information. And since we have a presence in Taiwan, they think that we provide a credible source of information for them, when other Chinese TV stations don't have the right to be stationed in Taiwan.

Vincent Brossel: Phoenix TV is limited to universities and offshore compounds and foreign embassies. Normal Chinese citizens don't have access to this type of information, and that's an important point.

Also, you said that foreign journalists have access to the whole country. Yes, it's true, because foreign journalists have been pushing the limits of the control. But there is a code [published] by the Foreign Affairs Ministry, and this code normally obliges the journalists to ask for permission to go outside of Beijing. These journalists don't normally ask permission. But if they are arrested outside of Beijing, they have to sign a letter saying they apologise and fully regret not asking for permission.

Is this really freedom of movement? Is this really freedom for foreign journalists? When you think that three years from now the Olympic Games will come to Beijing, and all the thousands of journalists arriving from around the world - will they need to ask for permission from the Foreign Affairs Ministry to go outside of Beijing to do stories?

Jim Clancy: With the Olympics coming up, and this is a big issue for China, there's a lot at stake for China with these Olympics. Are they playing “nice-nice” now?

Peter Herford: They will play nicer and nicer, but we've got a situation that is changing as we sit here. Day in and day out, the changes exist. We've heard it from all of our colleagues. The relationship between China and Taiwan has changed enormously and has opened up reporting opportunities. It is also true that there are regulations on the books, but they are ignored. They can put them into effect any time they want, that is absolutely true. But I will lay money on the fact that they will also pull them back as we approach the Olympics. The trend line in China has been improvement, not moving back.

Wen Guang Shao: One word about Phoenix coverage: We have about 20-per-cent penetration in China. Sometimes it's a matter of commercial interests and decisions, competing with local television stations for advertising sales.

Jim Clancy: But are you in regular Chinese homes?

Wen Guang Shao: We're not in all regular homes. Sometimes we have to negotiate with local cable networks to get carried in their systems. Most of the time, as Vincent said, we are on university campuses, and in government residential areas. We are in homes, but we aim at a higher echelon of government officials. But it's not ordinary homes, certainly not a lot in the countryside.

Jaime FlorCruz: It sounds very glamorous to be an international correspondent in China, but it is also a lot of work and a lot of hassles. We put up with bureaucratic hassles and police harassment. And that's because of the 10-day rule that we're under - this set of rules that require us to secure permission from the officials, 10 days in advance, before we can legitimately commit journalism. Of course, we ignore it almost all the time, because that's our instinct. So technically we break the rule when we don't secure prior permission - but that is part of our job.

Jim Clancy: Let's go back to Beijing and ask Rupert Wingfield-Hayes: Do you see that as part of your job, to push that envelope? Do you see yourself, as an international broadcaster, as forging new areas, not only for international media, but for Chinese media?

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes: We see ourselves as being journalists, just as we would in any other country. And to do our jobs properly as journalists in China, we have to push the envelope because if you complied with the rules in China, you simply wouldn't be able to do your job properly as a journalist.

It has become easier to go outside the rules because China has opened up so much in the past 10 years, and simply because there are a lot more foreigners in China. In every corner of China you go to, you find foreigners all over the place. I was in a small city in Anhui province the other day and I found a bunch of German engineers living in the local hotel. We don't stand out as much any more, so we can get around the rules more; we can push the envelope a lot more, and more and more of us are trying to do that.

But it still remains a highly restricted environment, and we do so at peril of being caught by the police. I had two of my colleagues detained on the same story that Phoenix went to in Hebei recently, and they were treated extremely badly by the local police there. They were strip-searched and roughed up. They had a very bad time indeed. So it's not all a bed of roses; it's not an easy place to do news by any means at all.

Jim Clancy: A member of our audience asks: Were there any reprisals against those women that you know of, or against the BBC, for that matter?

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes: Not so far as we know. We do go a long way out of our way to try and stay in touch with all of the people we do sensitive stories about, to make sure that there are not repercussions against them afterwards. As far as I know, those women have not had retribution taken against them.

Jim Clancy: Was the report actually seen inside China?

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes: That's a very good question, and this is a key part of it, because the Chinese government has built the infrastructure to be able to censor foreign broadcasts into China. I'm not aware of how Phoenix is distributed completely in China, but any foreign broadcaster that uses Sinosat-1, which we are all required to by Chinese law if we want legally to broadcast into China, is open to censorship by the State Administration for Radio, Film and Television. And it is very sophisticated and selective about what it can take out of news reports. They can literally take out one sequence or one sound bite they don't like. The Chinese government is not too worried about our reports because ordinary people in China are not getting to see them.

Jim Clancy: We've got two issues here. One is, how does the international media get to report in China? The other issue is: Why do we want to be involved in China? What are the stakes of being involved in China?

Jaime FlorCruz: Let me just point out that, aside from the fact that we go through these hassles and harassment, one big problem that we face is how to protect our sources, because that actually becomes a mental burden, which, if we're not careful, gets us into the trap of self-censorship. If I were doing that piece [on forced abortions], I probably would have pixillated the faces to protect them. But there's still not a foolproof way of protecting your sources. We face that all the time. We are doing just what all journalists would do to cover a story, but there, there is also that mental burden.

Jim Clancy: Does Reuters have a policy on that - even if the source comes out and says, “I don't care, use my name, and here's my address”? And they will do that, won't they?

David Schlesinger: We make clear to sources what the risks are, and if someone is willing to be named, then we will use their name in a report. But there's always a dialogue with the people you're talking with, and as that develops, you as a journalist have to get a sense of how comfortable they are, and how well they understand the risks. But of course we, like Jaime, spend a lot of time and effort protecting sources on sensitive stories.

Vincent Brossel: What the Chinese government fears a lot is good Chinese investigative journalists going to work with the foreign media. There is the case of Zhao Yan, the New York Times researcher. He has been in jail for one year without charge, in secret detention. They fear this type of guy, who switches from the Chinese press to the foreign media, because they have good inside sources, good inside information - they speak Chinese. A lot of foreign correspondents do not speak Chinese, which is a big limitation on working there. They really fear this co-operation between the good Chinese journalists and the foreign media.

Elisabeth Filippoulis (Greek public television, EPT): Let me tell you first about a personal experience I had last summer. I was invited by the Beijing 2008 Committee and the Coca-Cola Company. They had the presentation of the sponsorship of the Olympic flame. And when they took us to Tiananmen Square, our guide warned us that we shouldn't take any photos of people holding yellow flags - otherwise our cameras would be confiscated by policemen.

If you talk both with academics and government officials in China, many of them are now coming to the conclusion that the severe problems with China moving forward are related to questions of governance - the levels of corruption in China, questions of transparency of budget, questions of the qualifications of local officials. I wonder how far the international media can go in reporting freely on those issues?

David Schlesinger: We can report very freely on those issues for our audiences, which are international audiences. For the domestic audience, the key point was one made yesterday by Rebecca MacKinnon, that there is now this cacophony of local voices finding a means to get information and share information, and that will have profound changes on Chinese society and the media.