China blocks NY Times article on amazing wealth of premier's family

The authorities also blocked attempts to mention The Times or the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, in posts on Sina Weibo, a mini-blogging service in China like Twitter, said the Times.

The Foreign Ministry spokesman on duty in Beijing did not answer phone calls seeking comment.

The prime minister, Wen Jiabao had said in a speech last year that during childhood, “my family was extremely poor” . The blocked article said that his mother, Yang Zhiyun, now 90, later became outright rich, at least on paper, according to corporate and regulatory records, said the Times. One investment in her name, in a large Chinese financial services company, had a value of $120 million five years ago, the records show.

The details of how Ms. Yang, a widow, accumulated such wealth are not known, or even if she was aware of the holdings in her name, said the Times article . But it happened after her son became vice prime minister t in 1998 as and then five years later prime minister.

Many relatives of Wen Jiabao, including his son, daughter, younger brother and brother-in-law, have become extraordinarily wealthy during his leadership, the Times said its investigation showed.

"A review of corporate and regulatory records indicates that the prime minister’s relatives — some of whom, including his wife, have a knack for aggressive deal making — have controlled assets worth at least $2.7 billion," said the paper.

But the blocking of the sites meant that most Chinese were unable to read any of that.

The Times had posted the article in English at 4:34 p.m. on Thursday in New York (4:34 a.m. Friday in Beijing). By 7 am local time both the English- and Chinese-language Web sites of The Times were blocked from 31 cities in mainland China .

The Times said China had the world’s "most extensive and sophisticated system for Internet censorship, employing tens of thousands of people to monitor what is said, delete entries that contravene the country’s extensive and unpublished regulations and even write new entries that are favorable to the government."

The English-language and Chinese-language Web sites of The Times are hosted on servers outside mainland China.

A spokeswoman for The Times, Eileen Murphy, expressed disappointment that Internet access had been blocked and noted that the Chinese-language Web site had attracted “great interest” in China.

“We hope that full access is restored shortly, and we will ask the Chinese authorities to ensure that our readers in China can continue to enjoy New York Times journalism,” she said in a statement.

Former President Jiang Zemin of China ordered an end to blocking of The New York Times Web site after meeting with journalists from The Times in August 2001. The company’s Web sites, like most foreign media organizations, have remained mostly free of blocking since then, said the Times.