GUANGZHOU, China — A tentative agreement to defuse a newsroom strike by Chinese journalists over censorship controls in this southeastern provincial capital had been reached by early Wednesday, and some reporters working for Southern Weekend, the newspaper at the heart of the dispute, were told that the paper would publish as usual on Thursday, one journalist in the newsroom said.

“The paper is coming out tomorrow, and the propaganda department is going to hold a meeting with staff about this tomorrow,” said the journalist, who spoke Wednesday on the condition of anonymity. Several other reporters said that details of the agreement remained murky Wednesday morning, and that the deal could fall apart.

Protests over censorship at Southern Weekend, one of China’s most liberal newspapers, had descended into ideological confrontation on Tuesday, pitting advocates of free speech against supporters of Communist Party control, who wielded red flags and portraits of Mao Zedong.

The face-off outside the headquarters of the company that publishes Southern Weekend came after disgruntled editors and reporters at the paper last week deplored what they called crude meddling by the top propaganda official in Guangdong Province, which has long had a reputation as a bastion of a relatively free press.