China's State Terrorism

Chinese professor cut off mid-interview after authorities burst into his house
By Ben Westcott and Nanlin Fang

Chinese security forces broke into the home of an academic while he was giving a live phone interview with a US broadcaster Wednesday night, abruptly forcing him off-air.
Speaking with Voice of America from his home in the eastern province of Shandong, retired professor Wenguang Sun was discussing Chinese dictator Xi Jinping's recent visit to Africa when security forces cut him off.
"It's illegal for you to come into my place. I have my freedom of speech," Sun shouted, before the line went dead.
The Chinese government has been stepping up its crackdown on free speech and criticism of the country's leadership in recent years, under an increasingly paranoid Xi.

Former professor Sun Wenguang talking in his home in Jinan, east China's Shandong province on August 28, 2013.

As the police entered his house Thursday, Sun could be heard asking whether he had said something wrong.
"Listen to me ... Is this wrong? Ordinary people are poor," he said, before telling the interviewer seven or eight police officers have arrived.
"We don't go to Africa to spread money. Spreading money isn't good to our country and society. Not beneficial," he said in Chinese.
After the phone line went dead, the host of the show told viewers that the US government-funded Voice of America network "strongly" protests what happened to Sun. 

"This is the human right situation in China now," said the host.
CNN has reached out to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs for comment.
Sun, who is in his 80s, is a long-time critic of the Chinese Communist Party and has frequently been in trouble with authorities for his criticism of the government, according to Human Rights Watch.
During the Cultural Revolution he was detained twice for 30 months for "counterrevolutionary speech" while recently, in 2009, he was physically beaten on his way to a memorial for former Chinese leader Zhao Ziyang. 

Sun suffered several broken ribs in the attack, Human Rights Watch said in a statement.
In a statement after the broadcast was aired, Voice of America said subsequent efforts by the network to contact Sun had not been successful.
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression. This right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers," the statement said.

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 Corruption" Is A Pleonasm

China Seeks Arrest of Billionaire Who Accused Officials’ Relatives of Graft
By MICHAEL FORSYTHE

A Chinese-born billionaire who in recent months has publicized allegations of corruption against relatives of high-ranking Communist Party officials is now a wanted man after Beijing asked Interpol to issue a global request for his arrest.
China’s Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that the country had asked Interpol, the global police organization, to arrest the billionaire, Guo Wengui, hours before he appeared on television to deliver what he said would be a “nuclear bomb” of corruption allegations against the families of top Communist Party officials.
Mr. Guo, 50, has lived abroad for the past two years after a business deal to acquire a brokerage went sour. 

In March, he accused the son of a former top Communist Party official of corruption. 

On April 15, The New York Times, citing corporate records and an interview with one of the official’s relatives, reported that some of his allegations could be substantiated.
China asked Interpol to issue a so-called red notice to its member countries for Mr. Guo’s arrest, Lu Kang, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, told reporters on Wednesday in Beijing. 

Mr. Lu said that the notice had been issued, but that Mr. Guo’s name does not appear on Interpol’s wanted list. 

Interpol, in a statement, said that any of its 190 member countries could request that wanted notices not be publicized.

Mr. Guo is accused of giving 60 million renminbi, or about $8.7 million, in bribes to a former top intelligence official, Ma Jian, The South China Morning Post reported on Wednesday, citing people briefed on the matter whom the newspaper did not identify. 

Mr. Ma has been referred to in Chinese news outlets as Mr. Guo’s political patron.
Countries do not have to honor red notices, and as of Wednesday, Mr. Guo was not in custody. Instead, he was at his penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, which he bought in 2015, through a shell company, for $67.5 million. 

Two reporters from Voice of America’s Chinese-language service conducted a live television interview with him in the apartment.
In the interview, Mr. Guo called the report that he bribed Mr. Ma “false,” and he said he was not a Chinese citizen. 

He said he held passports from 11 other countries. 

Mr. Guo is a member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

China asked Interpol to issue a so-called red notice to its member countries for the arrest of Guo Wengui, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

He said he was in regular contact with F.B.I. agents and was not worried that he would be arrested. Mr. Guo said the issuance of the red notice was an attempt to prevent the Voice of America interview.
In the interview, Mr. Guo made new allegations about business empires secretly controlled by Chinese leaders, in this instance the nephew of a current member of the Communist Party’s ruling Politburo Standing Committee. 

“If they weren’t so corrupt, they wouldn’t be scared of me.”
Voice of America, which operates independently but is funded by the United States government, billed the interview as three hours long, running promotions about Mr. Guo’s promise to deliver “nuclear bomb” revelations about corruption, with the first hour broadcast and the remainder in an online webcast.
But about 15 minutes into the second hour, Voice of America abruptly ended the interview, setting off intense speculation in Chinese-language social media as to why the broadcast ended.
China’s government pressed Voice of America to cancel the interview, an official with the broadcaster said. 

The Foreign Ministry summoned its Beijing-based correspondent, Bill Ide, on Monday, where he was told that the interview would be viewed by China as interference in its internal affairs and told that it might affect the renewal of journalists’ visas, according to two people at Voice of America with knowledge of the meeting.
Officials from the Chinese Embassy in Washington also called Voice of America in an effort to stop the interview from taking place, one person with direct knowledge of the conversations said.

The person added that at no time were executives at Voice of America contacted by the United States government about the interview. 

The people interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk freely about communications with the Chinese government.
Voice of America executives, led by its director, Amanda Bennett, proceeded with the interview, with the understanding that the live portion last only one hour. 

The rest of the interview would be recorded to give reporters a chance to check Mr. Guo’s allegations and allow the Chinese government an opportunity to respond, the broadcaster said.
“In a miscommunication, the stream was allowed to continue beyond the first hour,” a Voice of America spokeswoman, Bridget Serchak, said in an emailed statement. 

“When this was noticed, the feed was terminated. We will release content from these interviews and will continue to report on corruption issues.”

The Exiled Chinese Billionaire With a Mar-a-Lago Membership

By Scott Cendrowski

Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Kwok

If you missed the latest billionaire scandal in China, you could be forgiven.
The case of Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Kwok, the billionaire property developer of Beijing Zenith Holdings, has mostly been carried out in Chinese language sites and through Beijing's propaganda machine.
The only people to make sense of the disparate stories are keen observers of elite Chinese politics. Those include the English language newsletter writer Bill Bishop, who has chronicled the case over the last two days, and New York Times reporter Michael Forsythe.
Here's what is clear. 

It is always dangerous to be a billionaire in China, especially one in real estate. 

Local governments control the land, and graft almost always lurks behind the deals that turn real estate from public to private.
Guo made his money through real estate. 

He's lobbed corruption accusations at China's most powerful, and the government has returned the insults. 

This week China succeeded in getting Interpol to call for Guo's arrest.
The latest episode is a growing embarrassment for the Communist Party particularly because it questions whether Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign can truly take on the China Communist Party's endemic corruption. 

Guo's accusations of corruption climb to the highest level of Chinese politics.
Here's the basic rundown:
After accusing officials of corruption throughout his career—according to investigative reports in Chinese media—Guo has recently taken on a deputy minister of Public Security. 

Guo was scheduled to give a three-hour interview to Voice of America on Wednesday, during which he promised "a nuclear bomb of corruption allegations.”
But after an hour, the interview abruptly stopped. 

Chinese officials pressured Voice of America to cancel the interview, an official with the broadcaster told the New York Times.
Guo's staged his latest interviews from the U.S., where he arrived in 2015, reportedly after his ally, former spy chief Ma Jian, was detained in an anti-corruption case. 

In the U.S. he has joined Trump's Palm Beach Mar-a-Lago resort, a fact that could ratchet up China-U.S. diplomatic intrigue in his case.
Since then, Beijing has staged a counter attack. 

Stories discrediting Guo have flowed from Chinese state media outlets this week.
What follows now is unclear.
Guo appears to remain safe in the U.S. to send more accusations of corruption at Chinese officials, unlike Xiao Jianhua, a billionaire abducted by Chinese state security from Hong Kong across the Chinese border earlier this year. 

Xiao was known for helping China's powerful move their assets overseas, according to Willy Lam, a professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong.
The latest drama is important in part because it involves high level officials. 

But it is also unfolding a few months before a once-every-five-years leadership change in the ruling Politburo Standing Committee, and it could change the calculus of filling five of the seven opening seats.