The award-winning five-person investigative reporting team of the China Economic Times led by veteran reporter Wang Keqin was dismissed Monday morning.

Arguably the country's top investigative reporter, Wang is known for his pioneering work including last year's controversial story about deadly substandard vaccines in Shanxi Province.

Soon after the vaccine story, the newspaper's editor-in-chief Bao Yueyang was replaced by Han Lijun, former chief editor of China Development Press at the newspaper, a subsidiary of the Development Research Center of the State Council.

Zhao Weimin, a reporter with the Beijing-based newspaper confirmed the disbandment, saying it was a "normal adjustment" in the company and the dismissed members would be allocated to other reporting teams.

"The investigative team is relatively small," he said. "It only produced one weekly report. Other teams conduct their own investigative stories too."

Wang has not spoken publicly about the dismissal, but posted a few suggestive statements on his Sina microblog.

He quoted a German poet as saying, "A regime will start purging people if no one stops it from burning books! A regime will start killing people when no one stops it from silencing people!"

The Global Times confirmed the dismissal with several insiders at the newspaper.

Qian Gang, a veteran journalist and director of the China Media Project at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre in the University of Hong Kong, was first to break the decision on his microblog Monday morning.

The dismissal had been announced during a meeting at 9 am, said Ma Xiangbing, a commentator from the China Business Daily, a friend of one of the reporters in the team.

"My friend was very disappointed. The reporters are still not sure about further arrangements at the moment."

The reporters had heard rumors about their team for six months, Ma said. He described the investigative team "financially poor, but carrying a vivid journalistic virtue."

Chinese investigative journalism faces serious obstacles, Qian told the Global Times Monday.

"Leadership of media organizations often faces tremendous pressure, hence a strong determination and devotion to journalism is vital," he said.

The dismissal was not part of any systematic crackdown but due to internal problems at the newspaper, believed Zhan Jiang, a professor at the International News and Communications Institute of Beijing Foreign Studies University.

Both Qian and Zhan agreed the public should not over-interpret the incident.

"The details are yet to be known," Qian said.

"Despite the incident, the general environment for investigative journalism is still improving," Zhan said.

Zhan posted on his Weibo microblogging site Monday that Wang and his colleagues "not only helped make China a more transparent society but also to some extent they took a culture that loved only good news and turned it into one that can handle some bad news as well."