The Manchurian Broadcaster

Voice of America fires three staff over explosive Guo Wengui interview
By Choi Chi-yuk

Voice of America’s Sasha Gong Xiaoxia (left) and Dong Fang are shown during the interview with Guo Wengui. 

Chinese fugitive Guo Wengui with Steve Bannon

Voice of America, a US government-funded broadcaster, has sacked three suspended staff members over their involvement in a live streaming interview with self-exiled Chinese tycoon Guo Wengui half a year ago, according to the International Federation of Journalists.
The IFJ, a global federation of journalistic trade unions, has called on the international news source to explain the terminations.
Washington-based journalists Sasha Gong Xiaoxia and Dong Fang interviewed Beijing-wanted billionaire Guo, who is also known as Miles Kwok, at a location that was not disclosed for Guo’s protection on April 19.
During the live stream, Guo accused numerous top Chinese officials or their relatives, including former top graft buster, Wang Qishan, of taking huge bribes.
The interview, originally expected to last three hours, was abruptly halted. 

Five Voice of America staff members, including Gong and Dong Fang as well as Yang Chen, Bao Shen and Li Su, were ordered to take administrative leave with pay amid an investigation.
The IFJ said in a statement issued on Sunday that both Yang and Bao had resumed their work while the employment of Gong, Dong Fang and Li Su, a technician, had been terminated. 

The three staff members had "allegedly" violated certain regulations, including disobeying management’s orders and "failing to follow journalistic practices", according to the IFJ.
Gong denied the allegations and said she would fight her termination, according to the IFJ.
“They (Voice of America) could not tell me which order I had disobeyed,” Gong was quoted. 

“I don’t understand how I had not followed the journalistic practice.”

Chinese Fifth Column: VOA or VOC?

CHINESE DISSIDENT SILENCED BY VOICE OF AMERICA
Decision praised to investigate U.S. broadcaster bowing to Beijing pressure

By BOB UNRUH

A coalition of American organizations promoting freedom inside China is praising a decision that there will be formal investigation of those managers at Voice of America who cut off, mid-sentence more or less, a long-planned on-air interview with Chinese dissident Guo Wengui.
Five journalists there also were investigated over the interview.
According to a statement posted on the website for Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, which has spent years fighting China’s one-child, now two-child, limits that trigger mandatory abortions, the office of Inspector General at the U.S. State Department will investigate the “management decisions” of the situation.
Besides Reggie Littlejohn of WWRF, the statement was signed by “The Barefoot Lawyer” author Chen Guangcheng, China Aid Assoication chief Bob Fu, Jianli Yang of Initiatives for China, Yaxue Cao of China Change, Lianchao Han of the Hudson Institute and Fengsuo Zhou of China Human Rights Accountability Center.

Littlejohn’s posting explained, “For those unfamiliar with the Guo Wengui interview incident, on April 19 of this year, Voice of America China Branch was set to broadcast a three-hour live interview of Guo Wengui, a Chinese billionaire with close ties to the Chinese State Security apparatus, who claimed to have information about high-level official corruption in the Chinese regime.
“Specifically, Guo stated his intent publicly to expose how China’s State Security apparatus pressured the Chinese business community into financing its infiltration into organizations globally, as well as its monitoring of Chinese citizens.
“VOA’s upper-level management abruptly cut short the interview mid-broadcast, to the consternation of the Chinese audience, many of whom believe that VOA was kowtowing to the Chinese Communist Party.”
The letter noted that five journalists then were “put on administrative leave.”
But the letter questions what happened to those journalists, and what triggered the abrupt shutdown of the interview.
It continued, “According to reports and information provided to us, the Chinese Communist regime took several extraordinary actions during the days leading up to the interview. For example, two days before the scheduled interview, officials from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned VOA’s Beijing correspondent to pressure VOA to cancel the interview. Officials then issued a warrant for the arrest of Guo. After this, the Chinese Communist Party issued a notice alerting Interpol of the Chinese regime’s arrest warrant for Guo. Having done this, they then accused Guo of being a fugitive criminal.
“The day before the interview, the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C. called the VOA Mandarin Service and demanded cancellation of the Guo interview,” the letter cited.
“Could it be that VOA management did indeed cave to pressure from the Chinese government? If so, why would VOA management be vulnerable to such pressure? Could reports be true that members of VOA management and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG, VOA’s parent federal agency) have significant business interests in China?”
The letter expressed suspicions of conflicts of interest.
“We applaud the OIG’s decision to conduct an investigation. We look forward to the results of this investigation, which we believe will include a complete vindication of the VOA Mandarin Five,” the statement said.

The Free Beacon reported just this week that the Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank, abruptly canceled a scheduled public appearance by Guo Wengui just before it was to be held.
Spokesman David Tell admitted there had been pressure from China, citing a cyber attack, a denial of service, that targeted the institute and had been traced to Shanghai.
The report said Shanghai is home of the Chinese military’s Unit 61398, a military cyber espionage unit.
Guo, who now is in exile in New York, recently applied for political asylum.
“I am shocked at Hudson’s cancelation, but at the same time I am also pleased the issue has proven to the American people and people of the world my repeated warning of the virulence and harmfulness of the Chinese kleptocrats’ long reach,” Guo told the Beacon in a statement.
“The significance and value of this incident has surpassed my talk at Hudson.”
The report said the Chinese government intimidation is the latest incident “in what appears to be a Chinese government influence campaign in the United States targeting Guo.”

Deep Chinese infiltration: Guo Wengui blames Chinese moles in US broadcaster Voice of America for pulling plug on interview.

“China also has been linked to another cyber attack against the Washington law firm Clark Hill that until recently had been representing Guo in his bid for political asylum in the United States,” the report said.
Guo is thought to be worth about $28 billion from real estate and other business operations, although China has frozen much of that.
He has revealed some details about China’s intel operations and he could be an intelligence “bonanza” for the U.S., the report said.
A Today report this week also said Facebook blocked a profile under Guo’s name.
Facebook claimed in the report the pages included someone else’s personal identifiable information.

VOA Chinese Fifth Column

How an interview with one Chinese billionaire threw VOA into turmoil

By Evelyn Cheng

Guo Wengui

A dispute over why Voice of America abruptly shut down an interview with a vocal critic of Beijing is raising questions about whether Chinese leadership influenced the U.S. broadcaster.
On April 19, taxpayer-funded Voice of America cut short a live interview with Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui — and subsequently put five of its own journalists on administrative leave.
"Somebody caved in to the Chinese government's demand, because the timing itself was very suspicious," one of those journalists, Mandarin Service Chief Sasha Gong, told CNBC last week. "Someone very, very powerful must be very, very afraid of this. Otherwise, nothing makes sense."
Gong said Chinese authorities met with Voice of America's Beijing correspondent two days ahead of the April 19 interview and asked for its cancellation. 

Voice of America management then asked Gong to cancel the interview, or at least to shorten it to 15 minutes, she said.
Gong said management declined to cancel the interview in writing before it began, but then abruptly pulled the plug one hour and 19 minutes into the live conversation.
Two of the other suspended reporters, who did not wish to be identified, concurred with Gong's account.

Voice of America, however, disputes Gong's version.
"At no time was there any management consideration of not doing the interview, nor of cutting short an ongoing interview for any reason," the broadcaster said in a statement to CNBC. 

Voice of America confirmed that it put Gong and four other department employees on administrative leave.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees Voice of America, appointed James McGregor, chairman of greater China for a public relations firm called Apco Worldwide, to investigate any influence from Beijing.
Gong characterized McGregor's role as "crisis management PR." 

McGregor did not respond to a CNBC request for comment.

Voice of America was founded in 1942 to encourage freedom of the press beyond U.S. borders. 

The organization received $218 million in funding from Congress in fiscal 2016. 

Amanda Bennett became director in 2016. 

She led the projects and investigations unit of Bloomberg when it came under fire from Beijing for a report on the wealth of Xi Jinping's relatives in 2012, just before he became Chinese president.
Bennett resigned from Bloomberg in 2013. 

She told CNBC she is "exceptionally proud" of the report on Xi and that it "was extremely controversial and at various times during the project we faced strong pressure from China not to publish."
This April when Voice of America began promoting its Mandarin-language interview with Guo, Chinese officials told the news organization that the planned program "was interfering with China's internal affairs," Gong said, noting the broadcaster has two visas for work in Beijing.

Among the billionaire Guo's allegations is that Wang Qishan, leader of Beijing's anti-corruption efforts, is himself tainted by corruption. 

CNBC was unable to reach the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs early Saturday morning Beijing time for comment.
Guo is believed to have fled China for the United States in 2014.
The tycoon's deep involvement in Chinese government and business affairs has apparently given Guo plenty of inside material, which he disseminates to his more than 200,000 Twitter followers. 

A New York Times profile of him noted that while "some of his claims have been outlandish and easily debunked," others "have turned out to be accurate."
Guo did not respond to CNBC requests for comment.
Voice of America's Gong said her reporting and live interview with Guo would have shed light on how much the Communist Chinese government is spending to monitor and intimidate dissidents — practices she said are on the scale of what was seen in the Soviet Union.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has called Guo a "criminal." 

On the day of the Voice of America broadcast, the ministry confirmed that it had asked Interpol to issue a "red notice" for Guo's arrest.
At 9 a.m. ET that day, the live interview in Mandarin began as scheduled before stopping shortly after an hour. 

The program had been planned as a one-hour televised broadcast, followed by two hours of internet livestreaming. 

The initial hour of the televised broadcast is still available on Voice of America's Mandarin Service YouTube channel.
"As I understand it, there were several members of senior management who were viewing this as it was taking place," Robert Reilly, who served as Voice of America director until 2002, told CNBC. "Why was the interview stopped while it was going on? You send a message to the audience that's watching."

Chinese Fifth Column: VOA Blocks Businessman From Revealing Chinese Spying Secrets

Guo Wengui details PRC intel operations, a potential intelligence windfall for FBI, CIA
By Bill Gertz

Guo Wengui 

An exiled Chinese businessman with close ties to the government has begun revealing secrets about Beijing's intelligence operations after China pressured the official Voice of America radio to curtail a lengthy interview with him.
Four VOA employees were suspended last month after more than an hour of the radio's exclusive interview with billionaire businessman Guo Wengui exceeded a time limit imposed under radio rules.
The four employees of the Chinese language radio division are now calling on Congress to investigate whether VOA managers gave in to pressure from China's government to shorten the Guo interview and as a result undermined the radio's integrity.
Sasha Gong, one of the four suspended employees and chief of VOA's Mandarin language service, says Congress should probe the matter.
"I would like the Congress to investigate if the management of the taxpayer-funded Voice of America caved in to the request and demand of the Chinese government. If so, what is the reason behind their decision?" she said.
A VOA spokesman defended the decision to cut off the interview after an hour based on the radio's practices limiting time devoted to live interviews.
"Pressure from the Chinese government played no role in any decision-making," said the spokesman, George Mackenzie. 

"VOA and the [parent organization Broadcasting Board of Governors] have decades-long histories of producing full fair and balanced journalism in the face of even the most extreme pressures."
VOA is the official U.S. government radio broadcaster providing news in 40 languages.
Critics have charged VOA is poorly managed and its news reports are too friendly toward anti-democratic states such as China.
Guo has close ties to senior Chinese Communist Party leaders, including government ministers and Politburo members. 

In April, he began disclosing detailed information on what he says is corruption among senior Chinese leaders, along with details of Chinese intelligence activities.
The four employees charged in an open letter to Congress that "a series of arguments and debates" led VOA to halt the April 19 on-air interview with Guo after one hour and 19 minutes. 

They said said cutting off the interview "gravely damaged" the "integrity and credibility of VOA as a media outlet."
"Furthermore, as VOA is a federal entity, the U.S. government's integrity and credibility have been greatly damaged, too," they said. 

"Therefore, the U.S. national interests have been greatly undermined as well."
MacKenzie, the VOA spokesman, said decisions on handling the Guo interview were based on journalistic guidelines requiring verification, balance, and fairness that apply to all VOA's various language services.
"There was no input whatsoever from the U.S. government, nor would the firewall permit any such input," MacKenzie said, referring to limits of official U.S. government controls.
China, meanwhile, has taken steps to intimidate Guo's family members and the businessman himself who is said to be in hiding in New York.
Guo's knowledge of Chinese intelligence operations could provide an intelligence windfall for the CIA and FBI, based on his access to Ministry of State Security (MSS) operations overseas and in the United States.
Ma Jian, a former MSS vice minister who was imprisoned for corruption last year, recently surfaced in an online Chinese video charging that he was in the pay of Guo and that they shared information.
After the VOA curtailed his interview, Guo, who has claimed to be working with Chinese intelligence and security services, took to social media and began providing daily videos and reports revealing Chinese spying and other sub rosa activities.
Writing on Twitter under the name @KwokMiles, Guo recently disclosed that MSS operatives work closely with wealthy Chinese nationals like him who are tasked with funding and conducting intelligence operations on behalf of MSS.
For example, in the United States, Chinese surrogates have funded private investigators to spy on the offspring of high-ranking Chinese officials, many of whom are in the real estate business or attend American universities.
In a bid to silence Guo, China detained two of his brothers. 

The brothers were eventually released and Guo said they had been tortured by authorities.
Additionally, Guo's wife and daughter currently have been allowed by Chinese authorities to visit him in New York but are required to return to China after 20 days where they can be used for political leverage against Guo.
Guo stated in one recent video that he fears his family is being used by the government to pressure him into silence or to force his return to China.
Guo also announced that he is offering $100 million to anyone who can produce evidence, such as bank records, revealing high-level corruption by Chinese officials.
In the portion of the VOA interview that aired, Guo dismissed the Interpol red notice as part of Chinese effort to silence him. 

China spent $60 million annually to arrange for Interpol to pick a Chinese national as its director. 

The current director is Meng Hongwei.
Guo said he has been in the United States since 2015 and holds several foreign passports. 

Asked about MSS activities, Guo said the ministry uses Chinese businessmen as agents called "commercial anchors" who assist MSS.
Ma Jian, the imprisoned MSS official, was in charge of directing his overseas business activities on behalf of the service, Guo said, adding that he has no formal relationship with MSS beyond the use of his business resources.
Guo also alleged he has information about corruption involving the family of Wang Qishan, the senior Party official in charge of Xi Jinping's nationwide anti-corruption drive. 

Wang is a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, the seven member collective dictatorship that rules China.
On Capitol Hill, committee aides said both the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and House Foreign Affairs Committee are monitoring the issue.
A House committee spokesman said: "The Foreign Affairs Committee is aware of the matter and following it. Sadly, this appears to be one more example of the need for reform at VOA."
A Senate Republican aide added: "Since the reports first surfaced, we have been tracking the suspensions and are prepared to conduct further oversight if necessary."
Sen. James Lankford (R., Okla.) is also looking into the matter, a spokesman said.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.
According to the suspended VOA employees, Guo earlier this year contacted the radio and said he wanted to go public with details of corruption by senior Chinese officials.
The employees who signed the statement to Congress are Sasha Gong, Fred Wang, Huchen Zhang, and Robert Li. 

They have denied any wrongdoing and are asserting that VOA management is treating them unfairly over the Guo interview.
Days before the planned three-hour live interview on VOA, China issued an arrest warrant for Guo in Dalian, and then an Interpol "red notice" calling for Guo's detention, claiming he was wanted for unspecified bribery charges.
An official at China's embassy then called VOA on April 18 and demanded the radio cancel its upcoming interview with Guo.
VOA managers, including director Amanda Bennett and deputy director Sandy Sugawara, decided to limit the Guo interview to one hour and ordered it halted after the interview exceeded that limit.
A White House petition was set up May 18 calling on the U.S. government to protect Guo as a "whistleblower."
"Chinese billionaire Guo Wen Gui is hunted by Chinese communist party by all means, he is exposing the massive corruption on highest level of Communist party and launching a campaign to push for Chinese Constitutional reform," the petition states.
The petition also said China has issued "an assassination bounty reward" for Guo and his family.
The dissident Chinese news outlet China Digital Times has documented some of Guo's charges and reported that Guo is planning an international news conference at an unspecified time in the future.
Disclosure of the Chinese intelligence activities come as the New York Times reported last weekend that China executed or imprisoned up to 20 of the CIA's recruited agents, based on a Chinese mole in the agency or a compromise of its secure communications.
The newspaper quoted intelligence sources as saying the damage began in 2010 and continued for two years, effectively neutralizing the CIA's sources of information on a major intelligence target.

Billionaire's corruption claims ripple through China's Communist Party

A Chinese billionaire in exile is meddling with the inner workings of China's Communist Party.
DW

China's government censor warned in April there would be "serious consequences" for unauthorized media coverage of Guo Wengui, the billionaire real estate magnate living in the United States. 

His case is "highly politically sensitive," it stated.
There is a reason China's Communist Party is so concerned: A few days earlier Guo had accused high-ranking party members of corruption in a live interview with the Mandarin-language service of Voice of America (VOA), a US government-funded media outlet. 

The livestream, scheduled for three hours, was halted after 80 minutes. 

The video stopped just as Guo began discussing Wang Qishan, who heads China's internal corruption watchdog.
Five VOA employees were put on administrative leave thereafter, including Service Chief Sasha Gong. 

The decision to cut short the livestream was made before it began, VOA stated. 

It added there was no pressure to do so from the US government, and while China did pressure the organization, VOA said that did not influence its decision.

Wang Qishan's role as chief corruption watchdog is considered second in power only to President Xi Jinping

Ex-spy chief on video
Bill Ide, a Beijing correspondent for VOA, was informed that the Guo interview was viewed as an interference in internal Chinese affairs and summoned by the Foreign Ministry, two VOA employees told The New York Times. 

The broadcast will reportedly play a role in visa extensions for VOA journalists.
A Chinese media campaign against Guo is underway, including videos with Ma Jian, the former acting director of state security who was detained two years ago in a corruption investigation. 

In the videos, he speaks about a number of unseemly business dealings he helped Guo with.
China's foreign ministry said on April 20 that Interpol had issued a "red notice" for Guo. 

A "red notice" is an international alert for someone wanted for extradition. Guo, a member of Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, resides in the US, which does not have an extradition treaty with China.

Abduction in Hong Kong
Despite China's official designation as a socialist country "with a Chinese character," its economic opening starting more than 25 years ago has produced the most billionaires in the world. 

Real estate has been a particularly fruitful way to amass wealth, which is maintained with the help of political connections and protection. 

But it can be risky business: Billionaire Xiao Jianhua was abducted from his hotel in Hong Kong in January and returned to mainland China. 

The Canadian passport holder, who the New York Times reported in 2014 had business ties with relatives of Xi Jinping, has not been heard from since.

Billionaire Xiao Jianhua was abducted from his hotel in Hong Kong and taken to mainland China in January

Dangerous political infighting
Information on powerful families is particularly valuable this year. 

The Communist Party will hold its quinquennial conference in the fall, during which new leadership will be chosen. 

Corruption accusations can serve as a useful tool for eliminating opposition vying for top posts. 

Guo's claims may wreak havoc on internal party politics, and there may be more to come: He has announced a press conference for June in New York. 

He has already compared the relationship between Chinese business people and politicians to prostitution.

What you need to know about China’s most wanted man

By Zheping Huang

Can't stop won't stop.

The Chinese government can’t seem to do anything about its most wanted man, who now lives in exile in the US.
Guo Wengui is not the first businessperson to have fled China, perhaps with secret information about the ruling elite. 

Previous fugitives, however, have either decided to stay silent and keep their whereabouts secret (paywall), or have been forcefully taken back to China before they can kick up too much of a fuss.
Guo is an outlier. 

Equipped with masterful social media skills, and protected by bodyguards (link in Chinese) in his Manhattan penthouse, Guo has been making serious accusations of corruption against China’s former and current officials. 

One of them, Wang Qishan, is widely considered the second-most powerful man in the nation.
The episode offers a good example of how the intricate ties between China’s rich and powerful can risk turning into a liability. 

If Guo is to be believed, China’s ruling Communist Party may be far more corrupt than the party is ready to ever publicly admit.

Who the heck is he?
Guo, also known as Miles Kwok, is a Chinese property tycoon who has been living overseas for more than two years. 

At the height of his career, Guo had a net worth of $2.6 billion, ranking 74th among China’s richest in 2014, according to the Hurun Report. 

One of his most well-known properties is the Pangu Plaza, a torch-shaped building close to Beijing’s Olympic stadium.

The 50-year-old billionaire first came to the spotlight during a corporate feud in late 2014. 

At the time Guo sought to acquire a large stake in Founder Securities, China’s sixth-largest brokerage, but squabbled over the terms with his former business partner Li You, who was the head of Founder’s state-owned parent.
The aborted business deal ended badly for both sides. 

In January 2015, Li was arrested by police on alleged corruption charges, and soon afterwards, Ma Jian, a former deputy spy chief who is reportedly a close ally to Guo, was also investigated for corruption.
In March 2015, Chinese financial news outlet Caixin published an investigative report (link in Chinese) detailing how Guo developed close ties with high-ranking Chinese officials including Ma to further his business interests. 

The report also revealed that in 2006 Guo secretly recorded a sex tape of a Beijing deputy mayor for not approving the Pangu project initially.
Guo denied that report and launched a personal attack on Caixin’s influential editor-in-chief Hu Shuli. 

In response, Caixin sued Guo for defamation.

What does he allege?
Since then, Guo has stayed quiet for the most part as he shuttled between Europe and the US—until recently. 

In the last few months he has taken to Twitter enthusiastically and granted several interviews with US-based publications, accusing former and current Chinese Communist Party officials of corruption.
“Striving for China’s true rule of law!” he says in his Twitter bio. 

“This is just the beginning!”
One of his latest allegations of corruption is against Wang Qishan, China’s top graft-buster who’s known to be a close ally of Xi Jinping. 

In a live interview with the Voice of America (VOA) last week, Guo claimed that deputy national police chief Fu Zhenhua, on behalf of Xi, had demanded he look into Wang’s nephew’s investment in Hainan Airlines—a very busy acquirer of travel-related assets around the world in the last few years. 

Guo said that Fu had made threats against his family to force him to cooperate. 

Guo said Fu told him that “Chairman Xi just uses (Wang), but doesn’t trust him.”
Guo also went after Wang’s predecessor, He Guoqiang, the former top disciplinary official before Xi came to office in 2012. 

In a March interview with Mirror Media Group, a Chinese-language news outlet based in Long Island, Guo claimed that He’s son He Jintao was the behind-the-scenes backer of Guo’s business rival Li You, the second-biggest shareholder in Founder Securities, who is now in jail.
The New York Times, citing corporate records and an interview with He’s relative, reported (paywall) that the He family did appear to control a stake in Founder through a series of shell companies.
Guo claims his assets in China were seized, and that his family members and former employees are being detained. 

He says he owns 11 passports, including ones from the European Union and the US, and that he hasn’t used any Chinese identification for more than two decades.

What does the Chinese government say?
China has asked Interpol, the international police organization, to issue a “red notice” to seek Guo’s arrest. 

Countries do not have to honor a red notice, which is not an international arrest warrant. 

In November, Interpol appointed a Chinese security official as its new chief.
Chinese authorities did not give reasons for the notice, which was issued just before Guo’s VOA interview. 

Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reported, citing unidentified sources, that Guo is accused of giving about $9 million in bribes to Ma, the disgraced former spy-master.
Guo said in the VOA interview that he was in regular contact with FBI agents, and was not worried about being arrested.
VOA said Chinese officials had expressed concerns about Guo’s interview. 

The Chinese foreign ministry has threatened not to renew VOA’s correspondents’ visas in China in response to the interview. 

VOA abruptly ended the interview early, and later said in a statement that it was due to a “miscommunication.”
Meanwhile, China is publicly going after Guo. 

After the VOA interview, Ma, who has not gone on trial yet, appeared for the first time after his arrest in a 20-minute video on YouTube to confess that he had misused his power to help Guo gain business interests in return for gifts including cash and properties.
The Beijing News reported (link in Chinese), citing unidentified government sources, that two executives of Guo’s Beijing-based companies were arrested last week for bribery and fraud charges. The newspaper also revealed that Xiang Junbo—China’s insurance regulator who was recently arrested—helped Guo get loans that Guo later misappropriated to buy a Hong Kong property in 2014, when Xiang was still working at Agricultural Bank of China, one of the nation’s big-four state banks.
So he must be a big deal.
Guo’s fight against the party establishment comes on the eve of its major leadership reshuffle this fall, when Xi is slated to start his second five-year term.
In the past five years, Xi has netted thousands of allegedly corrupt officials in a seemingly never-ending, ruthless anti-graft campaign steered by his powerful ally Wang. 

Speculation is mounting that Xi is likely to break an unwritten rule on retirement age in the party to let 68-year-old Wang seek a second term. 

Guo’s claims against Wang would seriously damage the legitimacy of Xi’s anti-corruption efforts.
The Chinese Communist Party also hates uncertainty, and Guo’s very public crusade against it is exactly what the party does not need, especially ahead of major events. 

Guo said that in the next few weeks he plans (link in Chinese) to hold a tell-all press conference on China’s anti-corruption campaign, and said he has information on four specific officials including Wang Qishan.
At least for now, no one appears to be able to stop Guo from speaking out from his Manhattan home.

Can anyone stop him?
For a few brief moments, it seemed that Guo may have been silenced.
Twitter briefly suspended Guo’s account today (April 27). 

Almost all of his 103,000 followers had disappeared when the account was back up and running, but those followers were later restored. 

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A similar episode happened to Guo’s Facebook account last week. 

The account was restored after Guo complained about his suspension from Facebook on Twitter. Facebook said that the suspension was a mistake (paywall) due to the company’s automated systems, without elaborating.