On Monday I resigned from Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, a newspaper I have served as China editor for 10 years. I did so with a deep feeling of bitterness, but the pressures that forced me to this decision did not come as any surprise.

I have had a somewhat checkered relationship with Chinese authorities ever since I was stationed in Beijing as a correspondent for Asiaweek in mid-1986. Beijing's censors and press officials are particularly harsh on ethnic-Chinese newsmen, who they think should display a certain degree of patriotism. Since Hong Kong's handover to Chinese sovereignty, Beijing's top leaders have taken an avid interest in the China coverage of the Hong Kong press, and sought to influence the Chinese-language press. Similar pressure is now being exerted on the English-language press, including the South China Morning Post.

Beijing's obsession with the Hong Kong media has reached alarming proportions. According to a Beijing source, before President Jiang Zemin's infamous tirade last month against the "simple, sometimes naive" SAR press corps, a senior cadre called a meeting of officials from units including the Chinese Communist Party Publicity Department, the Ministry of State Security, the Police, the Customs Authority and the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office. The officials reportedly considered having the CCPPD and Customs issue new directives making it more difficult for certain Hong Kong papers and Web sites to get into the mainland.

Such measures, however, wouldn't tackle the root of the problem. A much more effective means is to have the media owners themselves do the cleaning up. Many important TV stations and newspapers in the SAR are owned by tycoons with good links to the leadership -- and extensive business interests in the mainland. Given a few hints, the tycoons are smart enough to deliver the goods — a post-1997 Hong Kong phenomenon called "anticipating the wishes of the bigwigs from up north."

Beijing's effort to influence the SAR media is also facilitated by the lack of a well-established church-and-state boundary between the owners and management on the one hand, and the newsroom on the other. The blurred line between church and state is often exacerbated where the media companies concerned are traditional, Chinese family-run outfits; in many instances, the owners appoint relatives and cronies to senior positions in management — and sometimes even to the editorial department.

When Kerry Group Chairman Robert Kuok bought a controlling stake in the SCMP from Rupert Murdoch in 1993, there was speculation that given his close ties to the Chinese leadership, he might try to inject a dose of patriotism into the paper and get rid of or sideline "trouble-making" journalists. Alleged attempts by Mr. Kuok and his management staff to tamper with the newsroom — including efforts to fire certain journalists — were documented in the book "Dealing with the Dragon" by Jonathan Fenby, editor from 1995-99.

According to Mr. Fenby and others, Mr. Kuok moved fast to edge me out. When the SCMP and the Sunday Morning Post merged in 1995, my name appeared on a list of 20-odd journalists to be made redundant. My job was apparently saved because of Mr. Fenby's protests. After that, the owners and management began to scrutinize my weekly columns, and complaints were often made to the editor about my alleged transgressions.

Nothing too dramatic happened, however, until last June of this year, when Mr. Kuok wrote a letter to the editor excoriating a column I wrote on the trip of 30 tycoons to Beijing. Given the fact that Mr. Kuok was one of the tycoons, most of the Post news and political staff played the story in a low-key manner. I knew I was on tricky terrain. However, I thought this would be offset by the fact that that column was one of the least original articles I had written. The main point — that Beijing wanted the tycoons to rally behind Hong Kong's Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa — had already been made by the top cadres themselves in on-the-record remarks. Numerous other SAR and foreign commentators had drawn the same conclusion. I could only assume that one goal of Mr. Kuok's letter was to warn me to behave myself — or else.

Meanwhile, because Beijing suspected that certain journalists were behind a "dump-Tung conspiracy," official attitudes toward the Hong Kong media hardened. This was perhaps indirectly reflected in a number of conversations that Mr. Fenby's successor, Robert Keatley, had with me. Both before but particularly after the Kuok missive, Mr. Keatley told me I should "diversify" China coverage. He asked me to write — and to run — less stories about sensitive issues including intrigues within the Communist party, personnel changes or political campaigns such as that related to Mr. Jiang's "Theory of the Three Representations." These conversations left me with the impression Mr. Keatley was trying in a subtle way to depoliticize the coverage.

To give one example, beginning last spring most China journalists in Hong Kong — as well as foreign correspondents in Beijing — began reporting on leadership arrangements and intrigues leading up to the 16th Party Congress in 2002. This was one of the hot topics of the year. Mr. Keatley, however, repeatedly told me it was "too early" to write about such things. When I came up with a scoop in mid-year about Jiang having decided to step down as party chief in 2002, Mr. Keatley at first did not want to put it on the front page. The piece was later picked up by major newswires.

In September, Mr. Keatley wrote me this memo: "I get the picture from your columns of Jiang and others spending all their time squabbling among themselves about jobs for the boys and protecting their buddies, while no one pays any attention to what is happening to China or what policies should be adopted." I told him he had misread the columns, which had dwelled in detail on, among other things, new reform measures, the development of western China, and foreign policy.

At about the same time, Mr. Keatley made an apparent attempt to tone down a story I wrote about personnel-related discussions at the Beidaihe leadership conference in August. Without consulting me, he inserted one sentence into the text saying the facts in my story "could not be confirmed."

Things came to a head after a column I wrote last month on Mr. Jiang's frenetic reactions to the fall of the Milosevic regime in Yugoslavia. Mr. Keatley told me that the column had run afoul of some people. As usual, he refused to say who these people were. He told me that from that point onward, he had to read my columns first — and do the requisite pre-editing — before they went to the editor of the op-ed pages, where my columns appear. I protested. I told Mr. Keatley if he was not prepared to prescreen all the articles written by staff members and contributors — but that he was only prescreening mine — it would amount to discrimination and intimidation against myself.

No other editors of the Post had tried to pre-screen my columns before. And in the SCMP system, editors of different sections have the autonomy to process stories without having first to submit them to the editor. In fact, it was in September last year that Mr. Keatley first made the request that he pre-screen my columns. He backed down after I protested vigorously. This time, however, he told me he would go ahead no matter what I thought.

The coup de grace came last Thursday, when Mr. Keatley told me they had appointed Wang Xiangwei, a former journalist at the state-owned China Daily, to be my replacement as China editor. My responsibilities over newsgathering — which accounted for more than 80% of the time I spent at the Post — were taken away from me.

Though I had been the Post's main China news person the past 10 years, I had not been consulted on the so-called reorganization, which colleagues are afraid might result in a toning down of China coverage. I quit in protest, both at the way I was treated and the evident lack of resolve at the SCMP to stand up to China's pressure and continue reporting on topics that Beijing deems sensitive.

Mr. Lam has covered China since the late 1970s.