page_title: Reactions to the Panama Papers
section_title: China
hierarchical_section_title: Reactions to the Panama Papers / Government reactions and investigations / China
caption_attribution_description: President of China, Xi Jinping arrives in London, 19 October 2015.
context_section_description: Relatives of highly placed Chinese officials including seven senior leaders and former senior leaders of Politburo of the Communist Party of China have been named, including former Premier Li Peng's daughter Li Xiaolin, former Communist Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang's son Hu Dehua and Deng Jiagui, the brother-in-law of current General Secretary Xi Jinping. Deng had two shell companies in the British Virgin Islands while Xi was a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, but they were dormant by the time Xi became General Secretary of Communist Party (paramount leader) in 2012. Others named include the son and daughter-in-law of propaganda chief Liu Yunshan and the son-in-law of Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli. China's government is suppressing mentions of the Panama Papers on social media and in search engines results. China's Communist party reportedly has told news organizations to delete all content related to the Panama Papers leak.
  Considering the material to be a concerted foreign media attack on China, internet information offices were immediately given verbal orders to delete reprinted reports on the Panama Papers, and not to follow up on related content without exceptions. Hong Lei, the spokesman of China's Foreign Ministry, responded that he had "no comment" for "such groundless accusations" at an April 5 news conference.
  China is in the third year of an anti-corruption campaign launched by Xi which has punished more than 300,000 party officials for financial misdeeds and created many enemies for Xi.
  Chinese authorities have blocked almost all information about the Panama Papers on Chinese media and the Internet. A screenshot showed that the authority had forced all websites to delete content about the Panama Papers. Foreign websites such as Wikileak, China Digital Times have been blocked in mainland China. Official media, like The Global Times (Huanqiu Shibao) reported the resignation of Prime Minister of Iceland, but the media never mentioned that the Panama Papers caused the resignation. On Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like social media in China, almost all content about the Panama Papers was deleted. Because Xi's brother-in-law had been named, and the Panama Canal is well known, Weibo users started to use "brother-in-law", "Canal Papers", and other such tags to avoid Weibo's censor. Because of the censorship in mainland China, few Chinese people know of the Panama Papers.
caption: China's paramount leader Xi Jinping
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