Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Baidu Censors Chinese Title of New York Times Report on JPMorgan Connections to Wen Jiabao's Family

As noted in a previous post, on November 13, 2013, the New York Times published an article entitled "JPMorgan’s Fruitful Ties to a Member of China’s Elite" (摩根大通与温家宝女儿曾有商业往来). Some excerpts:
To promote its standing in China, JPMorgan Chase turned to a seemingly obscure consulting firm run by a 32-year-old executive named Lily Chang.
. . . .
But what was known to JPMorgan executives in Hong Kong, and some executives at other major companies, was that “Lily Chang” was not her real name. It was an alias for Wen Ruchun, the only daughter of Wen Jiabao, who at the time was China’s prime minister, with oversight of the economy and its financial institutions.
The New York Times published the Chinese language version of its article on November 14.

These screenshots show that, while a search for the Chinese title on Baidu on November 17 returned censored results, the top results were from private China-based news web sites operated by companies such as Sohu, Phoenix, Netease, and Tencent.

The same search a day later only returned results from a white list of web sites operated by the central government and the Communist Party.
These screenshots were taken on November 18, and show that attempting to retrieve results for a search for the article's title from Sohu, Phoenix, and 163.com returns nothing except a censorship notice.




Translation: Sun Daluo's Court Judgment for Sharing Books and Articles

The PRC government sentenced Sun Zhiming (孙志明, who wrote under the alias Sun Daluo (孙大骆)) to one year imprisonment for the crime of "di...