China jails financial bloggers over Yili dairy group posts

Case seen as part of wider crackdown on corporate journalism.
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A Chinese court has jailed two journalists for publishing reports about Yili Group, China’s largest dairy company, after its chairman disappeared from the public eye for months, in what has been seen as a sign of tightened restrictions on corporate journalism in China.
Zou Guangxiang and Liu Chengkun, both financial news bloggers, were handed jail sentences of one year and eight months respectively, by a court in the Inner Mongolia region where Yili is based, the official Xinhua news agency said in a brief report.
The two men were found guilty of conspiring together to “pick quarrels and provoke trouble”, a vague charge that in the past has been levelled against dissidents and human rights lawyers, according to a copy of the verdict seen by the FT.
Speculation surrounded Yili’s chairman Pan Gang earlier this year after he did not make public appearances from January until late May. The company did not clarify his whereabouts until April, when it said he was being treated abroad for a heart condition.
Police detained Mr Zou in March after he reported that Mr Pan had been placed under investigation by China’s ruling Communist party. Yili’s share price fell 3.5 per cent in a day after the report went viral, wiping almost Rmb6.1bn ($880m) off the market capitalisation of the company on Shanghai’s stock exchange.
Mr Liu, who wrote two short stories featuring a fictional “Mr Pan” and posted them online, was detained in April on suspicion of libel. Prosecutors told state media that although the account was presented as fiction, the charges were justified as it was “easy to identify” Mr Liu’s intended targets.
Prosecutors said Mr Zou had been inspired to write his article by communications with Mr Liu, and the two had “fabricated false information and jointly spread it online, confusing readers, causing trouble and serious confusion in public order”.
They added that Mr Zou had not complied with a request from Yili in March to delete his article on the grounds that it contained false information.
The charges raised fears about tightening restrictions on reporting about the management of companies such as Yili, one of China’s biggest with a market capitalisation of $20.8bn. Yili is a component stock of the MSCI China index, meaning foreign investors such as pension funds are exposed to the company.
Chinese state media weighed in on the case in May in a story titled “Social media is also ruled by law”, accusing both reporters of spreading rumours for profit. The report was widely seen as part of an attempt by authorities to rein in financial blogs, which have proliferated in recent years on social media platforms such as WeChat.
China’s already stringent controls on the media have tightened since China’s President Xi Jinping assumed power in 2012, with reporting on companies with large government stakes such as Yili increasingly off limits, according to several journalists.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, US-based advocacy group, said in a statement that it “strongly condemns” the verdicts. “No journalist should be in prison merely for reporting the news. Journalism is not a crime, but a public service,” it added.
Mr Liu’s lawyer, Wang Fei, said his client would appeal against the verdict on the grounds that he had not committed any crime.
Additional reporting by Wang Xueqiao

Mirá También

Así lo expresó Domingo Possetto, secretario de la seccional Rafaela, quien además, afirmó que a los productores «habitualmente los ignoran los gobiernos». Además, reconoció la labor de los empresarios de las firmas locales y aseguró que están «esperanzados» con la negociación entre SanCor y Adecoagro.

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