A mainland financial newspaper has been ordered to close for three months as punishment for a scathing report it ran about the Agricultural Bank of China.
China Business Post - one of the oldest financial newspapers on the mainland - decided to halt publication indefinitely in protest after the suspension was imposed.
In an article published on July 11, the newspaper alleged that the Changde branch of the Agricultural Bank of China had sold bad assets worth 4.6 billion yuan and later bought part of them back.
The article was published as the bank was being restructured to prepare for a stock market listing. The bank issued a public denial on July 15, claiming its Changde branch had not sold or bought back bad assets.
Sources at China Business Post said the newspaper and the bank had engaged in negotiations about how to handle the dispute, but the newspaper had suddenly been ordered to suspend publication for three months. The order was issued by the Inner Mongolian Press and Publication Bureau - the region that issued the paper's publication licence.
The newspaper is controlled by Bruno Wu Zheng, head of mainland media giant Sun Media, who skirted rules that newspapers cannot be privately owned through buying its advertising operation in 2005.
