Access to Bloomberg website blocked after it reveals assets of relatives of man expected to become president

This article is more than 8 years old

This article is more than 8 years old

China appears to have blocked access to the Bloomberg website after it detailed the multimillion-dollar assets of relatives of the man expected to become president.

It is widely assumed that Xi Jinping will become the general secretary of the Communist party later this year and president of China next spring. The Bloomberg report said it did not trace any assets to Xi, his wife or their daughter, but that members of his extended family owned luxury properties in Hong Kong and multimillion-dollar investments in companies.

It added that there was no indication of any wrongdoing by Xi or his relatives and no sign that Xi had sought to promote the business interests of his family.

But any discussion of the families of top leaders is extremely sensitive in China and the report comes amid growing concern about the links between political and economic interests.

Those have been highlighted by the downfall of Chongqing's former party secretary, Bo Xilai, whose extended family accumulated at least $136m (£86.8m) in assets, according to previous Bloomberg research.

"Our Bloomberg.com website is currently inaccessible in China in reaction, we believe, to a Bloomberg News story that was published today," said Belina Tan, head of corporate communications for the Asia-Pacific region.

The story itself remained accessible from the mainland on the Bloomberg Businessweek site.

Bloomberg said the investments were obscured by holding companies and restrictions on access to commercial documents in China. It based its report on regulatory filings.

Xi, the "princeling" son of Communist party veteran Xi Zhongxun, has a reputation as a clean politician. A 2009 US diplomatic cable, released by Wikileaks, quoted an old acquaintance as saying that Xi was not driven by money and had been "repulsed by the all-encompassing commercialisation of Chinese society", including official corruption.

The Bloomberg report said most of the assets it traced were owned by Xi's older sister, Qi Qiaoqiao, her husband, Deng Jiagui, and Qi's daughter, Zhang Yannan.

It said Deng held an indirect 18% stake in a rare earth firm with $1.7bn (£1.1bn) in assets, while the couple held 1.83bn yuan (£184m) of the assets of the Shenzhen Yuanwei Investment Company and wholly owned the Yuanwei group, which had assets worth at least 539m yuan (£55m). The report did not assess the liabilities of relatives and so could not calculate their net worth.

Deng told the agency he was retired and it was "not convenient" to talk much about the couple's business interests. The Chinese government refused to comment when the agency provided a list showing the Xi family's holdings to the foreign ministry.

The Guardian was unable to contact the individuals concerned.

Officials in China must report their income and assets and details of their immediate family to authorities, but do not have to disclose the information publicly. Proposals for public disclosure have made little progress.

Experts told Bloomberg that relatives of powerful figures could enjoy a "passive advantage".

"If you are a sibling of someone who is very important in China, automatically people will see you as a potential agent of influence and will treat you well in the hope of gaining guanxi [connections] with the bigwig relative," said Roderick MacFarquhar, an expert on Chinese elite politics at Harvard University.