Wen Jiabao Wealth Reports Denied By Family Lawyers

BEIJING -- Lawyers have denied a report that Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's family has amassed $2.7 billion in "hidden riches," a Hong Kong newspaper said Sunday.

The New York Times said in a lengthy article Friday that most of the alleged wealth was accumulated by Wen's relatives after he rose to high office in 2002.

Brother Wristwatch and Grandpa Wen: Chinese Kleptocracy

Two days after Americans go to the polls, China will embark with great fanfare on its own leadership transition, anointing a new generation of men—and they almost certainly will all be men—to run the country for the next ten years. A team of seven, the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party, will intone their official priorities for the new term: economic rebalancing, technological innovation, and territorial integrity, among other things. There is one issue that they will not emphasize, but it is more essential to their Party’s survival than any other: combatting corruption.

China blocks New York Times website after report on top official’s wealth

BEIJING — An explosive story about the massive wealth accumulated by the family of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao caused the Chinese government to block the website of the New York Times early Friday morning, just days before a sensitive once-in-a-decade transition of power from Wen and others to a new generation of leaders.

The article documents assets controlled by Wen’s family worth at least $2.7 billion, a shocking figure even in a country where government corruption is rampant and popular resentment against the elite has increased in recent years. The scandal also complicates the apparent intention of Chinese leaders to tackle corruption as a main issue at the Nov. 8 party congress, a move they have been signaling in the wake of other scandals that had dramatically shaken the party’s core leadership.

Billions in Hidden Riches for Family of Chinese Leader

BEIJING — The mother of China’s prime minister was a schoolteacher in northern China. His father was ordered to tend pigs in one of Mao’s political campaigns. And during childhood, “my family was extremely poor,” the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, said in a speech last year.

 But now 90, the prime minister’s mother, Yang Zhiyun, not only left poverty behind — she became outright rich, at least on paper, according to corporate and regulatory records. Just one investment in her name, in a large Chinese financial services company, had a value of $120 million five years ago, the records show.