PANAMA PAPERS: Chinese censors removing references to worldwide scandal

The Irish Times reports that China has described the Panama Papers as “a Western conspiracy”.

Large teams of government censors have been hard at work day and night blocking international news media references to the story, and deleting them even from social media. My own sources in China report that while Panama Papers are not mentioned in any official media, all over Chinese social media 微博micro-blog and Wechat 微信, Chinese citizens are talking about nothing but what they call the “Panama Storm”.

“Officials have been busy for the last two days censoring, blocking, disabling comments-boards or just closing down blog sites,” my source tells me. “People running micro-blogs are being met with the comment: ‘Sorry, your micro-blog 微博 is going to be disabled’ ”