Chinese censors block New York Times over story on PM's 'hidden fortune'

Chiang Kai-shek and his wife Song Mei-ling were said to have robbed China blind back in the 1940s. To make a fair comparison one would also need to extrapolate factors as time in office and GNP, but I wonder, with the booty converted to 2012 dollars, who would prove to be the bigger thief, Wen or Chiang.

Tsk tsk tsk. Very manipulative government. Too much censorship and an inadequate freedom of press.

So they can't even show the wealth of their leaders, even though that's been their mantra since the 80's?

What? Chinese leadership stumbling over themselves to hide rampant corruption and hypocrisy?! Say it ain't so!!

Not surprised. They already censored Google and Facebook and are very careful in censoring websites when you use yahoo over there.

Maybe the US Navy should also guard freedom of information in Asia.

They won't be able to keep that completely quiet in China.

And one of his kids, at least I know, is in US and is studying.

We should feel lucky

..that we were born in societies dedicated to free speech. We should feel responsible to pass that birth-right onto our decendants.

LFRAgain

People in America are not going to trash the Constituion and adopt the 5 Principle Relationships between Men as the basis for running America. By the same token, people in China will not do the reverse.

We live in an increasingly inter-dependent, but non-convergence world.

China is what it is. Given our history of meddling in China, and using things like "civilization," and 'free trade", -- or the Open Door, and then 'human rights" as excuses to try to push them around and invade their country, I think it unwise to try to pressure China for not living up to our standards.

All forms of government WILL try to keep sensitive information from the public eye - Communists or otherwise. This action falls under the motto of "for the national interest"

Those princlings kids of senior government officials studying overseas at the expense of commoners are disgusting and they should be ashamed, especially in a country like China where shame is a huge dishonor to have.

Wen...he pretends to be so humble....even more of a weasel now that it's been revealed his family fortune is in the ranks of Bill Gates! Disgusting!!!!!!

"Given our history of meddling in China, and using things like "civilization," and 'free trade", -- or the Open Door, and then 'human rights" as excuses to try to push them around and invade their country, I think it unwise to try to pressure China for not living up to our standards."

"Given our history of meddling . . ."? "Push them around"? "Invade their country"?

I usually like what you post, but I'm not sure if you're simply taking the piss here or if you're being serious. The first obvious disconnect in your moral relativism argument is that the Confucian principles you cite are so far removed from modern Chinese society, having been all but eradicated from the political fabric with the radical and comprehensive reforms of the Cultural Revolutions, as to defy imagining why you'd even mention them.

Second, to even suggest that Americans "trashing the Constitution" in favor of another form of government is anywhere akin to the Chinese people having any say whatsoever in a political system that has all but perfected suppression of dissent (Tiananmen Square wasn't just a momentary hiccup) makes me think you really are just having a laugh here.

And I'm going to dismiss outright your claims of attempted "invasion" of China by America as a momentary lapse of reason. Seriously? Invasion?

That the United States seeks economic hegemony over, well, the world, is no big secret, and I'd be the last to deny it. But gross exaggeration certainly isn't going to produce a compelling argument that everyone should just leave poor, old, abused China alone. There's nothing poor, nothing old, and most certainly nothing abused about modern China, a political state that essentially squandered any and all goodwill the world might have had for it after WWII by embarking on a political course that today still brings the average Chinese citizen little else but grief and humiliation at the hands of a corpulent, abusive, and wholly corrupt Communist leadership with no intention of ever letting the public make that hypothetical choice about governance you mentioned above.

You think it unwise to pressure China to perhaps behave more responsibly as a nation? Why? Because they'll what? Bite back? "Might makes right?" If I'm not mistaken, criticizing the US for engaging in that particular method of international diplomacy was in vogue of late.

" . . . now that it's been revealed his family fortune is in the ranks of Bill Gates! Disgusting!!!!!!"

Easy there, Steve. Wen's $2.7 billion doesn't come even remotely close to Gates' $66 bilion net worth.

LFRAgain, Bill Gates did something to earn his money. Wherever you go there is his product the PC computer and more.

The report said most of Wen's family's wealth was accumulated after he rose to high office in 2002. Sounds like he worked hard for himself to accumulate this much in ten years. People in China must be proud of what he saved for himself. Such an equal opportunity in China. Where are you Bernie? Madoff should move to China for a new frontier.

Why are people still calling China communist? It's a corrupto-kleptocracy.

LFRAgain

US Open Door formalized European predation of China. Under the barrel of a gun.

Then we supported Chiang Kai Sheck in the Chinese Civil War. And propped up the Nationalists in Taiwan.

Easy to say that the Chinese are so corrupt, but if we really want to complain, let us start with BUSH, with CHENEY and all of these fools who lied to us, and they are really making $$$ hand over fist in all of the wars they started! At least the Chinese just sell us cheap stuff, but are they starting wars around the world??

JTDanMan,

You're reading a very different set of history books than I am. The Open Door policy was an effort by the United States to prevent China from being carved up like a watermelon by European Powers, who had preyed on China well before the U.S. got invoved. Such a division of China by Britain, Japan, Germany, and a handful of other powers threatened what had, up until that point been lucrative and peaceful trade between the U.S. and China.

In principle, the Open Door policy, which was never a formalized agreement, called for European powers to respect the territorial integrity of China, rather than continue on a path that would have inevitably led to China's destruction. This request that was eventually ignored, laying the foundation for the Pacific War. It bears mentioning that no guns were involved whatsoever in any of the pocess leading up to Open Door policy. Any guns that you speak of had more to do with Britain than the U.S.

Yes, the U.S. backed Chiang Kai-shek. And why wouldn't it have? He told the U.S. everything it wanted to hear while he did the same with the Soviets. The U.S. was looking to preserve economic ties in China against its Soviet and European rivals, and with what the Communist Chinese were offering, Chiang was the best apparent choice at the time.

And again, why wouldn't the U.S. prop up the Nationalists in Taiwan? Their political system -- and by extention, economic system -- held more promise for the U.S. than the Communists' did.

The Open Door was an effort by the US to formalize a liberal free trade carving up of China. The trade between China and the West and Japan was predicated on anything but Peace. It was predicated on the Opium War.

The Opium War was Britain's baby, of which the U.S. took no official part in, aside from the efforts of a small number of private unscrupulous merchants who were eventually shamed into abandoning the offensive trade of opium by fairer-minded Americans in religious and media circles.

And you should also know better than to try to take the threat of a quite literal physical dismantling of China by European Powers as license to cram the square peg of U.S. economic interests into the round hold of European colonization interests. "[L]iberal free trade carving up of China"? That's a pretty acrobatic effort to do so, quite honestly. Not even remotely the same beast.

There's no denying that the U.S. was seeking to secure more a than favorable economic position for itself, but to characterize it as the U.S. being ringleader in a century of humiliation -- "at gunpoint" -- for China is just plain academic dishonesty tainted with no small amount of historical revisionism to satisfy the modern en vogue prediliction for making the United States to be the boogey man under every nation's bed and behind every door.

He started it... :-)