Last Friday the Bloomberg news agency published a 4,000-word investigation into the family business interests of Xi Jinping, heir apparent to China's presidency.
From rare earth minerals and energy investments, through telecommunications and power equipment, to infrastructure construction and property development in Beijing, Dalian and Shenzhen, Bloomberg detailed a multibillion-yuan business empire built up by Xi's siblings, his in-laws and their children.
Although the news agency stressed that its reporters had not traced any holdings directly to Xi, his folk-singer wife or student daughter, the article was still deemed sufficiently embarrassing for the authorities to block access to Bloomberg's website on the mainland.
Yet if Xi's relatives have been making the most of their exalted political connections to line their pockets, it would surprise no one. The families of other senior Communist Party leaders have established business empires that are just as extensive, and in some cases considerably larger.
In 2005, President Hu Jintao's son-in-law, a former chief executive of internet giant Sina.com, was listed by the Hurun Report as one of the mainland's wealthiest men.
And according to a secret US diplomatic cable sent in September 2007 and subsequently posted on the WikiLeaks website, the wife of Premier Wen Jiabao is a power in China's diamond trading business.
Wen's wife and children, the cable continues, 'all have a reputation as people who can get things done' and who are 'amenable to receiving exorbitant 'consulting fees''.