A spokesperson from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday that China doesn’t have censorship in journalism.

It’s the first official response to a cause célèbre that the propaganda chief of Guangdong province replaced the annual editorial address of Guangzhou-based Southern Weekend newspaper earlier this week.

Hua Chunying, spokesperson from the ministry, said at a news briefing that she isn’t aware of details of the incident, which doesn’t belong to foreign affairs, when asked to comment.

But Hua added that China doesn’t have censorship in journalism. “The central government protects the press freedom according to law, and the media and citizens have also had their supervisory functions.”

The original text of the address, “China's Dream, a Difficult Dream”, has been replaced by the propaganda chief Tuo Zhen with a short bland message lined with officialese, according to posts by staff with the paper on Sina Weibo, China’s biggest microblogging platform.

Many posts discussing the incident on Sina Weibo have so far been deleted or blocked.

Shanghai-based Dragon TV pointed out on Thursday that the new address authored by Tuo contains two mistakes including a factual one saying that an ancient Chinese king named Yu, who is famous for taming the flood, did his job 2,000 years ago, but actually it happened 4,000 years ago.