Chinese censors blocked online searches related to the New York Times as well as the newspaper’s websites on Friday after it published an investigation on the wealth of the Chinese premier’s family.
Searches for “New York Times” in Chinese and “NYT” were blocked on the popular social networking website Sina Weibo, which is similar to Twitter, with searches returning a message that the result could not be displayed “due to relevant laws”.
The New York Times’ official accounts on Sina Weibo and a popular rival, Tencent Weibo, had both been deleted on Friday, with attempts to access the accounts returning the message “this user does not exist”.
Searches for premier “Wen Jiabao” were also blocked on both social networking sites, but the names of top Chinese leaders are generally blocked on such sites.
Both Weibo sites also blocked searches using the name of Wen’s wife, Zhang Beili, and his son Wen Yunsong.
China’s most popular internet search engine, Baidu, displayed a message saying “some results cannot be displayed” in response to searches for the name of Wen and his family.