By Star Chang, posted Jul 1, 2012 at 8:22 AM, 484 views,

China Blocks Bloomberg.com for Revealing the Fortunes of China’s Next President

Web users in mainland China are unable to access Bloomberg and Businessweek sites, after the news agency has published an article about the fortunes of Vice President Xi Jinping’s extended family. China is gearing up for Mr Xi to take over as Communist Party leader in the autumn, and president next spring. In a sign of how sensitive these kind of revelations can be, the authorities immediately blocked access to Bloomberg’s website and also appeared to restrict on searching the Chinese name of Xi Jinping and any related stories on Chinese social media …

Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping is pegged to be China’s next president. The Bloomberg report asserts that his extended family holds interests that include investments in companies with total assets of $376 million US, an 18 per cent indirect stake in a rare-earths company with $1.73 billion in assets and a $20 million holding in a tech company. The move to block access to Bloomberg’s main website, on which the Xi story was the lead news item, underscores the government’s sensitivity to such exposure of wealth belonging to the top leaders could rampant official corruption

It is not the first time China’s authorities blocked access to a foreign website. The country closely monitors all internet content that crosses its borders, and several other western firms failed to penetrate what is known as the Great Firewall of China. Meanwhile, the unflattering story is not allowed to discuss on Sina Weibo, the Chinese Twitter-like service in China. It’s really inconceivable that Chinese web users are unable to search the name of their incumbent president and the up-coming new president on social media …

SOURCE: BBC, GAWKER