Limited backlash after foreign media probe Chinese officials' hidden wealth

While the reports may embarrass Chinese leaders, the government may be mindful to avoid a spiral of negative reports and a further backlash.

|
Jason Lee/Reuters/File
China's President Xi Jinping stands in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Nov. 13, 2013. A report released this week by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists' found evidence of some of China's top leaders, or their family members, using offshore tax havens.

Officials in China are lashing back at an international group of investigative journalists for its report on piles of money moved to offshore tax havens by some of the country’s elite, but are expected to keep the retaliation brief to avoid more negative coverage.

China blocked the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ website from domestic views following its report this week based on 2.5 million leaked financial records from the British Virgin Islands and Samoa. It says 15 of China’s wealthiest people and relatives of the top leaders have moved money to tax havens in those countries. Beijing also blocked four foreign news websites.

Although the report further embarrasses China, where leaders were suspected of denying visas for foreign journalists who covered former premier Wen Jiabao’s family wealth in 2012, the Communist government may curb its anger this time to avoid a self-destructive spiral of negative reports, more backlash, and then more reports.

“If they introduce a strong hand to fix the journalists, that will create more problems for both sides,” says Andrew Yang, a China-specialized professor with National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan, who believes that China may become more “honest” with the foreign media in order to protect its image.  

The journalist group’s report says between $1 and $4 trillion in “untraced” assets have left China since 2000. Among the 22,000 Chinese clients involved, the report says, were Chinese President Xi Jinping’s brother in-law, a first cousin once removed of former president Hu Jintao, and two relatives of Wen Jiabao.

Beijing worries particularly about news reports that imply wrongdoing by Communist party officials, who hope to stay clean as the Chinese public grows weary of corruption and the government pursues an anticorruption campaign. 

China already has legal control over its domestic media. But it has retaliated less against negative coverage in the foreign media since the 2008 Beijing Olympics. It realized then that some media will write what they want regardless of the official line, a veteran public relations firm executive in Beijing says.

“The order of the day is the domestic issues,” he says. “There isn’t as much obsession about who’s saying what about them. They do worry about [graft] issues becoming public, but I think they’ve grown up around how they handle them.”

The journalist group’s report withholds the names of some contributors to the report, but calls Taiwan’s CommonWealth magazine, Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao, and German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung as “partners” in the investigation.

China has expressed displeasure over the journalist consortium’s report but hinted at no long-term follow-up. Foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters this week the report was “hardly convincing” and that it raised “suspicions over the motives behind it.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Limited backlash after foreign media probe Chinese officials' hidden wealth
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2014/0124/Limited-backlash-after-foreign-media-probe-Chinese-officials-hidden-wealth
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe