Bloomberg site banned in China

China blocked access to Bloomberg’s website on the mainland after the business and financial news agency published a report Friday detailing the multimillion-dollar assets of relatives of the man set to become the country’s next president.

The Associated Press reports, “The outage also points to the government’s concerns about ensuring the country’s leadership transition goes smoothly. Xi is poised to take over as Communist Party leader in the fall and president next spring.

“Bloomberg’s spokeswoman in Asia, Belina Tan, said the company believed the Bloomberg site was inaccessible in China because of a story that it published Friday. Tan did not elaborate.

“Officials at several departments at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology either could not be reached or said they were not in charge of censorship of the Internet. This underscores a problem that companies face when their sites are blocked in China: it is unclear which government department to even approach to seek an explanation.

“In a sign that censors were vigorously scrubbing the Internet to prevent circulation and discussion of the story within China, searches on the popular Twitter-like site Sina Weibo for Bloomberg’s account and the company’s full name in Chinese were blocked or partially censored. In searches that did go through using an abbreviation of the news agency’s name, no results related to the Xi story appeared.”

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