China’s Internet censors blocked news yesterday about a graft probe in Namibia involving a firm linked to the son of Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) as the state-run media ignored the sensitive issue.
Two Namibians and a Chinese national were arrested last week in Namibia as part of a probe into bribery allegations involving Nuctech, a company headed until last year by Hu’s 38-year-old son, Hu Haifeng (胡海峰).
Searches for information on the case and Hu Haifeng’s connection to it on Chinese Web portals turned up error messages such as: “The search results may contain content not in line with relevant laws, regulations and policies.”
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
Such results on China’s heavily censored Internet are typically returned when a Web user seeks banned information.
China has a history of blocking access to sensitive data on the Internet, especially concerning politics and the lives of top leaders.
Popular sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have been blocked for weeks as censors sought to limit the information flow over the deadly unrest in Xinjiang and the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
The US-based China Digital Times, which monitors Web developments in China, said propaganda officials had issued an order banning various Internet searches related to the Nuctech case.
China Digital Times and media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said it appeared the Nuctech Internet censorship had been in place for a few days.
China’s mainstream media is tightly controlled by the government, and newspapers as well as TV news have also made no mention of the Nuctech case in recent days.
Hu Haifeng was president of Nuctech, which provides scanning technology, until last year, when he was promoted to Chinese Communist Party secretary of Tsinghua Holdings, which controls Nuctech and more than 20 other companies.
Nuctech provides security scanning equipment.
Nuctech representative Yang Fan (楊帆) and two Namibians, Teckla Lameck and Jerobeam Mokaxwa, were arrested after Namibia’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) discovered that a US$12.8 million down payment on 13 scanners had been diverted to a firm called Teko Trading owned by the two Namibians.
Nuctech has a Namibian government contract to supply security scanning equipment in a US$55.3 million deal, paid for with a Chinese loan granted when the Chinese president visited the country in 2007.
Investigators say the down payment was diverted to Teko Trading between March and April.
All three of the accused later drew large sums from the Teko account, with Yang taking 16.8 million Namibian dollars (US$2.1 million), most of which he is said to have paid into an investment fund, investigators said.
China’s foreign ministry declined comment when contacted by reporters about the case on Wednesday, referring queries to Nuctech.
Staff at Nuctech’s Beijing-based headquarters, however, also declined comment.
“We never speak to the media,” a woman who answered the phone said.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
RSS