Beijing censoring financial chaos on web...
China censoring Black Monday on country’s biggest search
engine, Baidu, stopping citizens looking for information about financial chaos
Users looking for an explanation of why their stocks are
in freefall met by a message saying that ‘Due to related rules & policy,
some search results won't be shown’
By ANDREW GRIFFIN Monday 24 August 2015
China has been accused of censoring reports about the
financial chaos in the country, stopping its citizens from looking for reports
about what’s going on.
China’s “Black Monday” has sent share prices around the
world into freefall, and has led to renewed worries about a slowdown in growth
in the country. But its citizens don’t seem to be able to find out why.
Baidu, the country’s biggest search engine, is censoring
results related to the chaos, according to George Chen, managing editor of the
international edition of the South China Morning Post. When searching for the
Chinese characters that translate to stock disaster, the results say that
"Due to related rules & policy, some search results won't be
shown".
Chinese news sites are mostly hiding the stories on their
front pages — though they are covering the huge collapse.
Xinhuanet, a news site that is run by the state-run
Xinhua News Agency, makes little mention of the crash. As with the People’s
Daily, another official news site run by the ruling Chinese Communist Party, it
buries its report on the crash low down on its home page — where it is only the
third-highest story in its business section.
But both sites are reporting the stories, if readers make
it there. The People Daily’s report has the headline “Stocks plunge most since
2007 as State support measures fail”, and Xinhuanet has running live updates on
the news with the title “China stocks see sharpest decline since 2007”.
The Chinese state interventions mentioned by the domestic
press have been sharply criticised by those outside of the country.
"The Chinese government's intervention into stock
markets has proven counter-productive,” said Jasper Lawler, market analyst at
CMC Markets.
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