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Chinese officials offered to bug offices/homes of WSJ reporters in Hong Kong

Chinese officials offered to bug the homes and offices of Wall Street Journal reporters in Hong Kong who were investigating the 1MDB fund to learn who was leaking information to them, reports Tom Wright and Bradley Hope of The Journal.

Wright and Hope report, “At a meeting the next day, Sun Lijun, then head of China’s domestic-security force, confirmed that China’s government was surveilling the Journal in Hong Kong at Malaysia’s request, including ‘full scale residence/office/device tapping, computer/phone/web data retrieval, and full operational surveillance,’ according to a Malaysian summary of that meeting.

“‘Mr. Sun says that they will establish all links that WSJ HK has with Malaysia-related individuals and will hand over the wealth of data to Malaysia through ‘back-channels’ once everything is ready,’ the summary reads. ‘It is then up to Malaysia to do the necessary.’

“It couldn’t be determined whether China provided any information. Mr. Sun didn’t respond to requests for comment.

“A Journal spokesman said, ‘We employ experts on security and cybersecurity to work with our journalists on safety and secure communications with sources of information.'”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.