Hu’s tightening of controls over political discourse and the media intensified with the publication in September 2004 of a list of “Top Fifty Public Intellectuals” in Southern Weekly. The list, dominated by intellectuals who in the 1990’s had called for freedom of speech and political participation, appeared with the statement: “This is the time when China is facing the most problems in its unprecedented transformation, and when it most needs public intellectuals to be on the scene and to speak out.”