A once-fiesty Chinese newspaper supplement is now much more establishment friendly -- a move a former co-editor calls a compromise.

An excerpt from a Reuters story:

The weekly Freezing Point section of the official China Youth Daily featured none of the hard-hitting pieces for which it was previously know and was not for sale on news stands, only being distributed to newspaper subscribers.

The censors closed Freezing Point, or Bing Dian, on Jan. 24 for publishing an essay by historian Yuan Weishi criticising what he said were dangerous nationalist distortions in Chinese history textbooks.

"It shows that pressure has had a result, both from within and without the newspaper," said former deputy editor Lu Yuegang, now languishing in the paper's news research office along with former editor Li Datong.

"It represents a compromise that it has been allowed to be published again," he added.

The closure, part of a government crackdown on free expression, sparked an outcry. Officials in charge of the paper, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party's youth wing, backed down and agreed to resume publishing of Freezing Point from March 1.

But the two editors who made it a standard bearer for combative journalism in China's heavily censored press were demoted and the first issue under the new regime contained nothing that would ruffle feathers in Beijing.