In October, when David Barboza published his Wen Jiabao investigation, Chinese officials lashed out, accusing him of having “ulterior motives” and trying to “smear” China. The New York Times website was blocked in China, and it was later revealed that the newspaper’s headquarters were subjected to a sustained hacking effort, which appeared to be aimed at acquiring Barboza’s personal communications. Bloomberg, which published an investigative report on the networks of power and wealth surrounding current President Xi Jinping, was also blocked in China and hacked following the report.

Following the Pulitzer announcement, Chinese authorities repeated the accusations against the New York Times. From AFP (via Economic Times):

The story, which was published in October last year, alleged close relatives of Wen have made billions of dollars in business dealings.

It provoked anger from authorities in China, who said it was part of a “smear” by “voices” opposed to the country’s development. The Times’ Chinese and English websites were subsequently blocked in China and remain inaccessible.

“Our position towards this issue is very clear. We believe the relevant report by the New York Times reporter is with ulterior motives,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a regular press briefing Tuesday.

Foreign reporters based in China know they face consequences from authorities if their reporting delves into areas the government does not want exposed. ChinaFile hosted a roundtable discussion titled, “Why Does China Mess with the Foreign Press?”, in which Columbia University’s Andrew Nathan discusses the widespread perception among China’s leaders that such investigative reports are sourced by players with their own political agenda:

A senior Chinese whose job it is to gather intelligence asked me both of these questions –why did the Times attack the premier and who gave them the information — and was incredulous when I answered that the wealth of Wen’s wife had been widely known for years, and this was a story just waiting to be written by a reporter with the skills to get the facts. He must have thought I was either naive or a liar. Such is the paranoia of the Chinese political class.

David Barboza has explained that all his reporting was based on scrupulous reading of public documents. Isabel Hilton points out that Chinese reporters often face harsher consequences for their investigative reports, and cites the case of Jiang Weiping, who was imprisoned for his reporting on Bo Xilai and other local officials in the 1990s.

Update: In a further crackdown on foreign media, the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television issued a directive this week forbidding journalists from “using news or informational products from foreign media or foreign websites” without prior permission.

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Post tags: Apple, david barboza, foreign correspondents, foreign media, Foxconn, jiang weiping, new york times, press freedom, Wen Jiabao
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Since then, netizens have continued to point out evidence from across the Chinese Internet–including this Xinhua article from August 2008 [zh] that states PLA Unit 61398 specifically installed flooring for use in high-security environments:

Everyone knows that Anxin Flooring is a renowned brand in China’s wooden flooring industry. They entered the large-scale realty project business very early on. Plus, at the very beginning, they specialized in working with clients that had very strict standards for their building materials, such as national organs and foreign embassies. The PLA General Political Department building, the General Staff Meteorological Bureau, the General Staff Surveying and Mapping Bureau, the Unit 61587 Commander Building, the General Staff Headquarters Satellite Positioning Center Residential Building, Unit 61398, the State Administration of Taxation, the Beijing Cultural Palace of Nationalities, CNPC Overseas Staff Dormitory, the Bulgarian Embassy office building, and the Wenzhou Municipal Government building were all early buyers of Anxin flooring for major projects.

How does Anxin Flooring relate to PLA-sponsored cyber attacks? One netizen explained the correlation on his Sina blog [zh]:

Chinese netizen: Unit 61398 is most likely conducting IT-related work in their office building. There’s still a report up on the web about Anxin Flooring. The report states “army units that require very strict guidelines for their building materials, the General Staff Headquarters Satellite Positioning Center Residential Building, and Unit 61398” all used their flooring. Anxin is an American wholly foreign-owned company, and its leading product–wooden flooring–is known to protect against static electricity. Anyone in the IT industry would know that without a computer room, there would be no need for this kind of anti-static flooring.

Of course, one could argue all office buildings house computers. However, not all office buildings house PLA international relations and intelligence experts, like Colonel Zhou Jianping. An announcement for a public lecture by Zhou Jianping [zh] displays his affiliation with Unit 61398:

Public Announcement for the Pudong Forum Lecture Series

[Source: Pudong News. Published December 15, 2010]
–The Situation on the Korean Peninsula and the Border Security Environment

Topic: The Situation on the Korean Peninsula and the Border Security Environment
Lecturer: Director of the China Institute of International Relations and researcher at the Shanghai City Strategic Studies Association, Zhou Jianping.
Time: 1:30pm December 25, 2010.
Location: Pudong Library’s 600-person lecture hall

Zhou Jianping
Researcher of the People’s Liberation Army General Staff Headquarters Unit #61398, rank of Colonel. Director of the China Institute of International Relations and researcher at the Shanghai Strategic Studies Association. From 1979-2001, he taught international relations at the People’s Liberation Army Foreign Languages Institute. In 2001, he was redeployed to Shanghai to work in intelligence research.

Professor Zhou worked long-term in the field of international relations education. He is especially knowledgeable in the fields of Chinese border security and hot button issues of international relations. He has published academic articles in these fields. In recent years, his research has centered mainly on border security and the Taiwan issue. He has also conducted deep research into the fields of Sino-American relations and U.S. political, diplomatic, and strategic military issues.

An academic paper published in the Journal of PLA University of Science and Technology (Natural Science Edition) coauthored by a member Unit 61398, titled “Novel Method to Calculate Causal Correlation Belief Values of Network Alerts.” Keywords: network security, alert correlation, attack time expense, and correlation belief. You can view the paper’s cover page, which includes an English abstract, through this link.

Chinese IT and Internet information portal Cecb2b.com reported on this paper [zh] in light of the New York Times piece:

Cecb2b Net. On February 19, The New York times and numerous western media reported that a 60-page report released by U.S. cyber security company Mandiant linked recent cyber attacks experienced by many western media organizations with China’s People’s Liberation Army. Hackers were traced back to “the headquarters of People’s Liberation Army Unit 61398, located in a 12-story building in Pudong, Shanghai.”

Using Baidu’s literature search function, we found an article coauthored by Song Sigen of PLA Unit 61398 regarding the detection of intrusion by hackers, titled “Novel Method to Calculate Causal Correlation Belief Values of Network Alerts” (see images on Baidu Literature). The article was published in the June 2009 edition of the Journal of PLA University of Science and Technology (Natural Science Edition), volume 10 issue 3.

Translated by Little Bluegill.

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Post tags: cyberattacks, cyberespionage, hacking, new york times, People's Liberation Army, unit 61398
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The Bloomberg stories cited by Long Island University, which oversees the awards, include investigative reports looking into the family wealth of disgraced Chongqing Party chief Bo Xilai and incoming president Xi Jinping. The New York Times reports, by David Barboza, examined the financial connections between “princelings” and their extended families. One report looked into the vast wealth obtained by relatives of outgoing Premier Wen Jiabao.

The CBS series reported on activist Chen Guangcheng, during the time he was held under house arrest in Linyi, Shandong, and after his escape to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

From the New York Times:

In a series of articles, Bloomberg examined the wealth accumulated by Bo Xilai, who was the leader of China’s sprawling Chongqing municipality before being ousted in a scandal that erupted over the murder of a British businessman. The series discovered a web of assets stretching from Beijing to the Caribbean worth at least $126 million. The series also revealed how relatives of Xi Jinping enriched themselves.

Mr. Barboza’s three-part report in The Times, “Princelings,” examined the financial interests of high-ranking Chinese officials and their families. The articles showed that relatives of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao had accumulated a fortune of $2.7 billion.

The award for television reporting went to journalists from CBS News for their work uncovering human rights abuses in China. The correspondent Holly Williams and the cameraman Andrew Portch were recognized for their coverage of the human rights activist Chen Guangcheng, who fled China after years of being under house arrest for his work exposing how some Chinese women were forced to have abortions in order to comply with the country’s one-child policy.

After the stories were published, both the Bloomberg and New York Times’ sites were blocked in China. Later, the New York Times (along with the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post) revealed that their site had been hacked, with David Barboza’s email communications the apparent target.

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On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal revealed that it, too, has suffered attacks focused on its coverage of China. From Siobhan Gorman, Devlin Barrett and Danny Yadron:

In the most recent incident, the Journal was notified by the FBI of a potential breach in the middle of last year, when the FBI came across data that apparently had come from the computer network in the Journal’s Beijing bureau, people familiar with the incident said.

[…] Among the targets were a handful of journalists in the Beijing bureau, including Jeremy Page, who wrote articles about the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood in a scandal that helped bring down Chinese politician Bo Xilai, people familiar with the matter said. Beijing Bureau Chief Andrew Browne also was a target, they said.

[…] “Evidence shows that infiltration efforts target the monitoring of the Journal’s coverage of China and are not an attempt to gain commercial advantage or to misappropriate customer information,” Paula Keve, a spokeswoman for Journal publisher Dow Jones, said in a written statement Thursday. Dow Jones is a unit of News Corp.

The Times noted that Bloomberg News had also been attacked following its investigation of Xi Jinping’s family last year, and that security firm Mandiant had compiled a list of other targeted journalists. The Globe and Mail’s Mark MacKinnon added on Twitter that a 2011 intrusion into his own computer had also been aimed at “specific China-related files”. Numerous other targets have been identified elsewhere; in fact, wrote Adam Segal of the Council on Foreign Relations, the “sweeping cyber espionage campaign […] appears endemic”. From Foreign Policy:

As with many cases of cyber espionage, the break-in is assumed to have started with a spear-phishing email, a socially engineered message containing malware attachments or links to hostile websites. In the case of the attack on the security firm RSA in 2011, for example, an email with the subject line “2011 Recruitment Plan” was sent with an attached Excel file. Opening the file downloaded software that allowed attackers to gain control of the user’s computers. They then gradually expanded their access and moved into different computers and networks.

[…] Evidence that the hackers are China-based in all of these cases is suggestive, but not conclusive. Some of the code used in the attacks was developed by Chinese hacker groups and the command and control nodes have been traced back to Chinese IP addresses. Hackers are said to clock in in the morning Beijing time, clock out in the afternoon, and often take vacation on Chinese New Year and other national holidays. But attacks can be routed through many computers, malware is bought and sold on the black market, groups share techniques, and one of the cherished clichés of hackers is that they work weird hours.

Perhaps the most compelling evidence has been the type of information targeted. The emails and documents of the office of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan activists, defense industries, foreign embassies, journalists, and think tanks are not easily monetized and so would apparently have little attraction to criminal hackers. The information contained in them would be of much greater interest to the Chinese government.

Graham Cluley at Sophos’ Naked Security blog summed up the attribution debate:

Security experts brought in by the newspaper have pointed the finger of blame at China. And, in all likelihood, they’re right.

However, it must be remembered that it is extremely difficult to prove who is behind an internet attack like this. That’s because it’s so easy to use compromised computers around the world to route attacks through – disguising the true origin.

Of course, even if China is identified as the starting point of an attack – it doesn’t necessarily prove that it the operation is backed by the Chinese government or intelligence services. It could just as easily be a patriotic group of skilled, independent Chinese hackers upset with how the Western media is portraying their country’s rulers.

But let’s not be too naive… In all probability, the New York Times’s conclusion is correct, and this attack was sanctioned by the powers that be in Beijing.

NPR’s Neal Conan raised a third possibility: that the campaign might have been initiated privately by a member of Wen’s family, to investigate the investigation.

According to The Times report, the organization’s Symantec anti-virus software detected only one of 45 pieces of intruding malware. Symantec would not comment for the article itself, but in a later statement suggested that the newspaper had simply not bought enough of its products:

“Advanced attacks like the ones the New York Times described in the following article, (http://nyti.ms/TZtr5z), underscore how important it is for companies, countries and consumers to make sure they are using the full capability of security solutions. The advanced capabilities in our endpoint offerings, including our unique reputation-based technology and behavior-based blocking, specifically target sophisticated attacks. Turning on only the signature-based anti-virus components of endpoint solutions alone are not enough in a world that is changing daily from attacks and threats. We encourage customers to be very aggressive in deploying solutions that offer a combined approach to security. Anti-virus software alone is not enough.”

While some dissected the NYT attack itself, others pondered its broader significance. The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos viewed it in light of Xi Jinping’s professed crusade against official corruption:

The timing of all this is significant for anyone interested in the prospect of reform: this attack has unfolded at the very moment that the new Chinese leadership, under Xi Jinping, has pledged to root out corruption before it destroys the Party. Xi has been making so many gestures of reform that he has persuaded some longtime China-watchers to take him seriously.

[…] The renewed commitment to combating corruption isn’t looking as sincere. On the contrary, this case feels like déjà vu for the Times: in 2004, the Chinese government detained the Times researcher Zhao Yan, accusing him of leaking state secrets. As evidence, the investigators cited a photocopy of one of Zhao’s handwritten notes; the Times pointedly noted, “questions remain about how security agents obtained a copy of the note. One possibility is that agents entered The Times’s Beijing bureau without permission.”

This time, the newspaper claims, the intruders have been exorcised, and no sensitive data was taken. The Times has always maintained that the Wen exposé was based on public records, not human sources. Nevertheless, some feared, the recent episode might raise doubts about its ability to protect such sources in future. At Slate, Farhad Manjoo suggested that a deterrent effect might even have been one of the attackers’ goals:

The most important outcome here might be the chilling effect: Now that a Chinese attack on the New York Times is international news, any dissident or potential whistle-blower in China will be wary of talking to journalists at the paper—or, for that matter, all journalists.

In other words, the hack worked. […]

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bo Xilai, computer security, cyberattacks, cybersecurity, Dalai Lama, hackers, hacking, journalism, Neil Heywood, new york times, news media, newspapers, Wen Jiabao, Xi Jinping
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Investigators still do not know how hackers initially broke into The Times’s systems. They suspect the hackers used a so-called spear-phishing attack, in which they send e-mails to employees that contain malicious links or attachments. All it takes is one click on the e-mail by an employee for hackers to install “remote access tools” — or RATs. Those tools can siphon off oceans of data — passwords, keystrokes, screen images, documents and, in some cases, recordings from computers’ microphones and Web cameras — and send the information back to the attackers’ Web servers.

[…] The attackers were particularly active in the period after the Oct. 25 publication of The Times article about Mr. Wen’s relatives, especially on the evening of the Nov. 6 presidential election. That raised concerns among Times senior editors who had been informed of the attacks that the hackers might try to shut down the newspaper’s electronic or print publishing system. But the attackers’ movements suggested that the primary target remained Mr. Barboza’s e-mail correspondence.

“They could have wreaked havoc on our systems,” said Marc Frons, the Times’s chief information officer. “But that was not what they were after.”

What they appeared to be looking for were the names of people who might have provided information to Mr. Barboza.

I would like to apologize to the NYT computer support folks I snapped at after they reset my password without warning nytimes.com/2013/01/31/tec…

— John Schwartz — NYT (@jswatz) January 31, 2013

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A widening discontent was evident this month in the anticensorship street protests in the southern city of Guangzhou and in the online outrage that exploded over an extraordinary surge in air pollution in the north. Anger has also reached a boil over fears concerning hazardous tap water and over a factory spill of 39 tons of a toxic chemical in Shanxi Province that has led to panic in nearby cities.

For years, many China observers have asserted that the party’s authoritarian system endures because ordinary Chinese buy into a grand bargain: the party guarantees economic growth, and in exchange the people do not question the way the party rules. Now, many whose lives improved under the boom are reneging on their end of the deal, and in ways more vocal than ever before. Their ranks include billionaires and students, movie stars and homemakers.

Few are advocating an overthrow of the party. Many just want the system to provide a more secure life. But in doing so, they are demanding something that challenges the very nature of the party-controlled state: transparency.

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Post tags: air pollution, CCP, censorship, economic growth, freedom of speech, Guangzhou, middle class, new york times, Shanxi, Southern Weekly, southern weekly protest 2013, transparency, water pollution
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Why is this happening now? At bottom, it’s a curious confluence of skill, corruption, and record-keeping. Twenty years ago, most foreign correspondents made their bones on exotic front lines, and rarely ventured into the wilds of business reporting until they came home. But these days the ranks of the foreign press include a number of people who came up reading 10-Ks and bond prospectuses and have the instinct to deploy those skills abroad. At the same time, the increasing sophistication of China’s economy has forced the bureaucracy to create a body of records that, if deciphered correctly, can provide a roadmap of relationships that no human source could easily match. And finally, the scale of corruption in China has grown right along with the economy, creating a target-rich environment.

…

Some are calling for the U.S. to respond by delaying or preventing Chinese journalists from entering the United States. Last year, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican from California, introduced the “Chinese Media Reciprocity Act,” which would compel the State Department to deny visas to all but a handful of the some six-hundred-and-fifty Chinese citizens working in the U.S., until China removes the obstacles to Americans. France, I’m told, did the same thing behind the scenes, and the problems disappeared. But this strikes me as unattractive option that risks undermining the very values of free, unfettered reporting that empower the American press in the first place. (For a smart take, see this testimony by Robert L. Daly, an expert on Chinese-U.S. media dealings.)

But the U.S. can do much more, both privately and publicly. In public, the State Department, at a senior level, should strongly object to pressure on American journalists, with the same energy it has directed at obstacles to the free conduct of other American businesses in China, or violations of intellectual-property and human rights. In private, media reciprocity should become a priority, and U.S. officials can remind their counterparts that Beijing’s ambitious plans to expand Chinese media in the United States are vulnerable to a backlash. This problem will not get solved on its own.

The New York Times reported on Monday that Chinese authorities have failed to renew a visa and journalist accreditation for Chris Buckley, an Australian citizen who recently rejoined the newspaper from Reuters. On Thursday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said they were still reviewing his application. And in May 2012, Al Jazeera English had to close its operations in China after authorities refused to renew the visa of its Beijing correspondent, Melissa Chan.

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Post tags: Al-Jazeera, censorship, Chris Buckley, Evan Osnos, foreign correspondents, foreign media, Melissa Chan, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, new york times, press freedom
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“The Chinese government always deals with issues related to foreign correspondents in China based on law and regulation,” the Foreign Ministry said in a written response to questions. “His application is still under consideration,” it added.

Mr. Buckley, an Australian national, has declined to comment on the matter. A spokesman for the Australian embassy in Beijing has also declined to comment.

The Foreign Ministry said in its statement that it was incorrect to say Mr. Buckley had been deported or that approval of his visa being delayed.

In a statement this week, the Times’ executive editor, Jill Abramson, said she hoped “the Chinese authorities will issue him a new visa as soon as possible.”

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Tencent paid tribute to Qidong protesters and others.

- Tribute to Ten Protesters (致敬十大反对者): The Web portal Tencent posted an homage to 2012′s most notable Chinese protesters on December 30. The popular post was harmonized two days later.

- Dai Xianglong (戴相龙): Dai, former governor of the People’s Bank of China, and his relatives have profited immensely from stock in Ping An Insurance, according to a December 30 New York Times exposé.

- Taihong Co. (泰鸿公司): Tianjin Taihong, which purchased cheap stock in Ping An, is mentioned in the Times piece on Dai. In October, the Times revealed that outgoing prime minister Wen Jiabao’s relatives hold shares in Taihong.

- Ox Demon (牛妖): Pronounced niú yāo, this refers to New York (纽约 Niǔyuē). The New York Times so  rankled Chinese officials with its report on the Wen family wealth that its Chinese-language website, just launched on June 28, 2012, was blocked. Times reporter Chris Buckley, who has been in China for 15 years, was forced to leave the country at the end of December when his journalist visa was not renewed.

- Chen Pokong (陈破空): A political commentator and activist, Chen was imprisoned for almost five years for his involvement in the Tiananmen protests of 1989. He currently lives in the United States.

All Chinese-language words are tested using simplified characters. The same terms in traditional characters occasionally return different results.

Browse all of CDT’s collected sensitive words in this bilingual Google spreadsheet.

CDT Chinese runs a project that crowd-sources filtered keywords on Sina Weibo search. CDT independently tests the keywords before posting them, but some searches later become accessible again. We welcome readers to contribute to this project so that we can include the most up-to-date information. To add words, check out the form at the bottom of CDT Chinese’s latest sensitive words post. 

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Fairfax understands that Buckley, who rejoined The New York Times in October after a stint at Reuters, has received no official explanation of why his application has not been accepted after a delay of more than two months.

Buckley’s treatment raises concerns about bilateral reciprocity, given reporters and propaganda workers from Chinese state media are given unimpeded access to Australia and the US.

It also illustrates the challenge facing the new leader, Xi Jinping.

Mr Xi has repeatedly warned that corruption threatens the Communist Party’s existence but has not yet shown he is prepared to allow the media ”sunlight” that analysts say is required to redress the problem.

The New York Times report on Mr Wen was one of a series of damaging foreign media reports about how leading Communist Party families have acquired enormous wealth despite their professed socialist ideals.

The New York Times’ Chinese and English websites have both been blocked following the newspaper’s recent reporting on China. Phil Pan, an American journalist who was hired to edit the Chinese site, has also been denied a journalist visa in China, according to the SMH article. But on Twitter, Pan expressed optimism that Buckley would be permitted to return to China:

@limlouisa @pekingmike @chubailiang He’ll be back soon, I hope.

— Philip Pan (@panphil) December 31, 2012

In May, Al Jazeera correspondent Melissa Chan became the first foreign journalist in more than a decade to be expelled from China. The government never offered any public explanation of the move.

Update: See a New York Times report on Buckley’s departure from China:

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment on Mr. Buckley’s forced departure. Ministry officials have not said if they were linking Mr. Buckley’s visa renewal or Mr. Pan’s press accreditation to the newspaper’s coverage of China. In a statement, The Times urged the authorities to process Mr. Buckley’s visa as quickly as possible so that he and his family could return to Beijing.

“I regret that Chris Buckley has been forced to relocate outside of China despite our repeated requests to renew his journalist visa,” Jill Abramson, the executive editor of The Times, said in the statement. “I hope the Chinese authorities will issue him a new visa as soon as possible and allow Chris and his family to return to Beijing. I also hope that Phil Pan, whose application for journalist credentials has been pending for months, will also be issued a visa to serve as our bureau chief in Beijing.”

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In a recent speech to members of the Chinese community in Thailand, footage of which was posted to the website thaicn.com on Wednesday, Mr. Wen gave what sounded like farewell speech, despite having another four months at the helm of the world’s second-largest economy.

What was remarkable about the speech was not so much its content as the way it ended.

“In the pursuit of truth, I would die nine times without regret. If I’m going to die, I want to die with honesty and integrity,” he said as he was wrapping up, a paraphrase of his favorite poet, Qu Yuan. To that he added: “I hope everyone will forget me – that includes Chinese people and overseas Chinese. Forget me.”

Huh?

Wen’s remarks have been read as an “assertion of integrity” following a New York Times investigation into the multi-billion dollar fortune amassed by his family during his time in power. Wen himself is said to have ordered an official inquiry into the exposé’s claims. From Shi Jiangtao at South China Morning Post:

The Beijing-based historian Zhang Lifan said Wen’s remarks could be seen as his parting message before going into full retirement next year. “As a premier who famously cares about his reputation and his own place in history, I think Wen is trying to say loud and clear that he is innocent and all those allegations against him or his family are biased and misleading,” Zhang said

Zhang said Wen was confident that he had been wrongly accused and wanted to voice his frustration about becoming the main target of criticism from Communist Party conservatives and leftists opposed to his high-profile appeals for bolder political and economic reform.

See more on Wen via CDT.

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Post tags: new york times, poetry, thailand, Wen Jiabao, Zhang Lifan
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Wen Jiabao Family Wealth: See also reports from October 28 and 26.
- Wang Weidong (王卫东): One of the Wen family lawyers.
- Bai Tao (白涛): The other Wen family lawyer.
- 2.7b: Abbreviation for 2.7 billion, the estimated value of the Wen family personal assets.
- 27 + U.S. dollars (27+美元)
- Niu Shi (纽时): Abbreviation for the New York Times (纽约时报).
- Twisttimes (扭腰times): “Twist” (扭腰 niǔyāo, like the 1950s dance) sounds similar to New York (纽约 Niǔyuē).

Other:
- Moon Moon Bird (月月鸟): These are the components of the character 鹏 Péng, referring to former prime minister Li Peng, infamous for declaring martial law in Beijing during the Tiananmen protests. Li has recently donated RMB 3 million for student aid to Yanan University.
- Rita Fan (范徐丽泰): Former president of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong and a member of the Hong Kong delegation to the National People’s Congress.

Note: All Chinese-language words are tested using simplified characters. The same terms in traditional characters occasionally return different results.

CDT Chinese runs a project that crowd-sources filtered keywords on Sina Weibo search.  CDT independently tests the keywords before posting them, but some searches later become accessible again. We welcome readers to contribute to this project so that we can include the most up-to-date information. To add words, check out the form at the bottom of CDT Chinese’s latest sensitive words post.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bai Tao, Hong Kong, Li Peng, National People's Congress, new york times, Rita Fan, Sensitive Words Series, Wang Weidong, Wen Jiabao, yanan
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I began looking into the business dealings of Wen Jiabao’s family late last year. I had been working on a series called “Endangered Dragon,” which looked at China’s government-managed economy, and wanted to include a piece that would give deeper insight into how China’s capitalism worked at the top. It is a broad subject, which I decided would be made more manageable by focusing on one family. I chose the prime minister’s family because I had heard conjecture about their business dealings for many years. People talked openly about the family’s wealth as if it was fact, but there was really no reporting on the subject that I could find that cited hard evidence backing up the claims. I kept scratching my head about why no one had tried to truth-squad the widespread rumors.

My only real source for this lengthy article was a filing cabinet full of documents I requested from various Chinese government offices over a period of about a year. After having some luck with my initial requests for corporate registration documents from the State Administration for Industry and Commerce bureaus, I went on a reporting spree: requesting and paying fees for the records of dozens of investment partnerships tied to the relatives of Wen Jiabao.

Barboza has previously explained how he gathered publicly available corporate records.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei, who accused the article last week of having “ulterior motives” and trying to “smear” China, attacked it again on Monday. “There are always some voices in the world that do not want to see China develop and become stronger,” he said, “and they will try any means to smear China and Chinese leaders and try to sow instability in China. Your scheme is doomed to failure.”

People’s Daily’s former international news editor Ren Yujun has also attacked The New York Times. Instead of challenging Barboza’s report itself, however, he brought up the Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal in which the Times’ new chief executive, formerly at the BBC, has become embroiled. In another article [zh], Ren wrote of “an explosion in plagiarism and fabrication” at the newspaper, pointing out the 2010 Zachery Kouwe and 2003 Jayson Blair scandals. The Financial Times’ Simon Rabinovitch noted, however, that Ren’s own piece consisted almost entirely of unacknowledged passages from other articles, from Xinhua, People’s Daily and beyond.

While Barboza accused neither Wen nor his family of anything illegal, Donald Clarke wrote at China Law Prof Blog that Wen may still have broken Party disciplinary rules which “as written are arguably tighter than is reasonable”:

The bottom line is that Wen appears to be in violation of a Party rule requiring senior officials to prevent their close relatives from engaging in business in areas (geographical or subject-matter) under their jurisdiction or, failing that, to resign. Since Wen is the premier, all of China falls within his geographical jurisdiction, and pretty much all areas of business would be within his subject-matter jurisdiction as well. This, of course, means that his close relatives can’t engage in any business in or even relating to China at all. I don’t claim that this is a reasonable or practical result, or that it was intended by those who wrote the rule, but that’s how I read it. My reasoning is below.

Following a statement from Wen family lawyers on Saturday, Clarke also briefly discussed the prospect of legal action by Wen’s family within the United States. He linked to a more in-depth analysis by Jonathan Turley, who concluded that:

Wen may have lawyers but he may not have a particularly good lawsuit. The most important defense to defamation remains truth. That could put the family in a difficult position. As a highly secretive family in a highly secretive country, they are not used to American discovery rules. They could be forced to disclose copious amounts of financial records to make their case. Many could find that even a few million dollars as opposed to hundreds of millions as a curious nest egg for “Communist” leaders and their families.

Legal action at home might be more easily controllable; Isaac Stone Fish suggested at Foreign Policy that the Times’ past legal defeats in Singapore offer a precedent. But both He Weifang and Pu Zhiqiang told the South China Morning Post that even this would probably be considered too risky. Evan Osnos, assessing the fallout from Barboza’s report at The New Yorker, agreed, and dismissed “conspiracy theories” that the newspaper had been manipulated by Wen’s political enemies. He concluded:

• Not Surprised by This Story? Perhaps you should be. One of the standard lines going around in recent days has been the notion that this subject is somehow old news, that people already “knew” that Chinese leaders benefit from public office, so why bother? To me, that’s akin to saying that since we “knew” that campaign finance corrupts American government, we shouldn’t have bothered to unearth the crimes of the lobbyist Jack Abramoff; and since we “knew” British tabloids would walk a fine line to get a story, we shouldn’t have gotten so exercised about digging out the details of phone-hacking and the paying of police for information. In the end, that’s the nature of investigation: it puts details on what we don’t know but think we do. Sometimes the conventional wisdom is right, and sometimes it’s wrong, but you never know until you look. Corruption in China, after all, is hardly a scoop in itself. Lin Yutang, for one, wrote, “In China, though a man may be arrested for stealing a purse, he is not arrested for stealing the national treasury.”

He wrote that observation in 1935.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: donald clarke, He Weifang, investigative journalism, journalism, journalistic ethics, legal dispute, Lin Yutang, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, new york times, people's daily, plagiarism, pu zhiqiang, singapore, transparency, Wen Jiabao
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Flower wreaths for a college student who was allegedly beaten to death by Ningbo police.

Ningbo Protests: More blocked terms have accumulated over the weekend and Monday, even as the city government has postponed the planned expansion of a local petrochemical plant.

See also Sensitive Words: Ningbo Protests and More and Weibo Blocks Photo Uploading in Ningbo.

Blocked as of October 28:
- Mayor Liu Ji (市长刘奇): Protesters have called for the Ningbo mayor to step down [zh].
- Tianyi Square (天一广场): One of the locations of protests.
- demonstration (游行): Re-tested.

Blocked as of October 29:

- Liu Ji (刘奇)
- Wang Huizhong (王辉忠): The Ningbo Party Secretary,
- Ningbo + college student (宁波+大学生): Ningbo authorities vehemently deny the rumor that a college student was beaten to death by police during the protests. The official effort to dispel this rumor has had little effect.
- Ningbo + memorial service (宁波+追悼会): Netizens have circulated photos of what they claim was a memorial service for the slain student.
- Ningbo + Public Security Bureau + Wang Weibiao (宁波+公安局+王伟标): Netizens also attest that Wang Weibiao, Deputy Director of the Ningbo Public Security Bureau, shouted at protesters that anyone singing the national anthem would be arrested.

Read more about the protests here.

Wen Jiabao’s Family Wealth: The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs states the New York Times report on the Wen family’s personal wealth “blackens China’s name and has ulterior motives.” The Wen family lawyers issued a statement published in the South China Morning Post, claiming “the so-called ‘hidden riches’ of Wen Jiabao’s family members in The New York Times’ report does not exist.”

See also Sensitive Words: Wen Jiabao’s Family Wealth.

“PX is not okay!” (PX BX: PX不行！ PX bù xíng!)

Blocked as of October 28:
- wen + hundred million (wen+亿)
- wen + family (wen+家人)
- wen + New York (wen+纽约)
- wen + assets (wen+财产)
- wen + wealth (wen+财富)
- prime minister + family (总理+家人)
- prime minister + family (总理+家族)
- prime minister + assets (总理+财产)
- prime minister + wealth (总理+财富)
- Wen general (温总): 总 zǒng is the first part of “prime minister” (总理 zǒnglǐ).
- Zhang Beili (张蓓莉): Alternate writing of Zhang Beili, the name of Wen Jiabao’s wife.

Note: All Chinese-language words are tested using simplified characters. The same terms in traditional characters occasionally return different results.

CDT Chinese runs a project that crowd-sources filtered keywords on Sina Weibo search.  CDT independently tests the keywords before posting them, but some searches later become accessible again. We welcome readers to contribute to this project so that we can include the most up-to-date information. To add words, check out the form at the bottom of CDT Chinese’s latest sensitive words post.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: censorship, environmental protests, Internet censorship, Liu Ji, new york times, Ningbo, protests, Sensitive Words Series, sina weibo, Wang Huizhong, Wang Weibiao, weibo, Wen Jiabao, Zhang Beili
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The lawyers claimed that those of Wen’s relatives who have engaged in business activities have done nothing illegal, and hold no shares in any companies; that his mother has never received any income or property besides her regular salary and pension; and that Wen himself has never interceded on their behalf or allowed policies to be affected by his family’s financial interests. Several points addressed statements not made in the Times article. “In fact,” wrote Donald Clarke at China Law Prof Blog, “the statement disputes remarkably little […. T]he lawyers’ statement really challenges only one specific assertion – that Wen’s mother is a multi-millionaire – and one general assertion – that several of his relatives own shares in various corporations.” From Keith Bradsher’s report on the statement at The New York Times:

The statement was not a sweeping denial of the article. The statement acknowledged that some family members were active in business and that they “are responsible for all their own business activities.”

While the statement disputed that Mr. Wen’s mother had held assets, it did not address the calculation in the article that the family had controlled assets worth at least $2.7 billion.

Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for The Times, expressed confidence in the article. “We are standing by our story, which we are incredibly proud of and which is an example of the quality investigative journalism The Times is known for,” she wrote in an e-mail.

The lawyers’ statement represents an unusual move for the family of a senior Chinese leader. When Bloomberg News published an article in late June describing real estate and other assets held by the family of Vice President Xi Jinping, his family did not respond publicly.

(See CDT’s coverage of the Bloomberg article and subsequent censorship.)

Speaking with Simon Rabinovitch of The Financial Times, the Brookings Institution’s Cheng Li said that this “unprecedented” response is encouraging: “Wen Jiabao is behaving differently from other Chinese leaders. His reaction can potentially be a positive example.” At the South China Morning Post, Shi Jiangtao discussed the different reactions to the two investigations, and the Times article’s possible impact on transparency reforms:

Zhang Lifan, a Beijing-based political analyst, said the image-conscious premier, who had always boasted a “clean” image, had no choice but to fight back.

“The Times’ report has forced Wen’s hand … Of course the best way to dismiss allegations is for Wen to become the first mainland leader to disclose his personal assets,” Zhang said.

Both [Zhang and Zhu Lijia, of the Chinese Academy of Governance] noted that when the family of Vice-President Xi Jinping was subject to similar attacks in June by Bloomberg he kept quiet.

“Xi apparently chose to bide his time as the leader-in-waiting while Wen, who will step down next year, chose to fight as he has nothing much to lose,” Zhang said.

Experts consulted by the Post’s Keith Zhai felt that the statement’s threat of legal action against the Times would probably come to nothing:

He Weifang, a law expert at Peking University, said the statement was more of a gesture than a substantial legal document. “It was a demonstration of the attitude of a single party [the Wen family], intended to show the Chinese public that [The New York Times] report wasn’t factually correct,” He said.

If the Wen family does take the Times to court, it could be a formidable undertaking.

“Then the case would get bigger … and even out of control,” He said. “Based on this rationale, I reckon it’s not likely [the Wen family] would sue The Times.”

[…] Pu Zhiqiang, a Beijing-based civil rights lawyer specialising in press freedom and defamation cases, said the statement was more like a declaration of innocence. “It’s understandable why the family asked the lawyers to make the statement, but to me it didn’t say anything. It’s more like a public oath or some act of public relations.”

At IHT Rendezvous, Mark McDonald described Chinese authorities’ efforts to stifle discussion of Barboza’s report, citing CDT’s Sensitive Words post on blocked weibo search terms. Delivery in China of the the hard-copy Tribune carrying the article, meanwhile, was variable. From NPR’s Louisa Lim and the Los Angeles Times’ Julie Makinen:

Surprised my IHT arrived intact today.Expected to see whole WJB-related pages torn out.

— Louisa Lim (@limlouisa) October 27, 2012

Hilarious. This is how a hotel explained why the IHT (with NYT story on Wen $$) would not be delivered in Beijing Sat. twitter.com/JulieMakLAT/st…

— Julie Makinen (@JulieMakLAT) October 28, 2012

For more on fallout from the investigation, see ‘New York Times Wen Exposé Makes Waves‘ at CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bloomberg, donald clarke, He Weifang, Internet censorship, new york times, newspapers, pu zhiqiang, Wen Jiabao, Xi Jinping, Zhang Lifan
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