Chinese Media Puts Blackout on Reports of National Financial Meltdown

As China’s stock market meltdown continues to worry the world’s financial markets, media outlets everywhere are rife with the story. Everywhere, that is, but China itself, where the communist government there has placed a blackout on the financial story.

Westerners who watch the Chinese media have noted that on Tuesday the state-run media in China didn’t discuss the financial panic the Chinese market crash has instigated across the world. It has also been reported that China’s state-run TV stations are also boycotting the story.

Since June Chinese authorities have instructed the media there to refrain from covering the developing panic. One reporter was even arrested for breaking that silence.

A staffer from the Chinese financial magazine Caijing was arrested earlier this year for daring to report on the financial situation. He was charged with “spreading fake information” about the country’s stock market.

As Slate’s Joshua Keating notes, this embargo on financial reporting is interesting for the fact that Chinese authorities were urging the Chinese people to invest heavily in the stock market earlier this year and now many of those people have lost much of their investments. This is also hurting millions of elderly Chinese who expected their stock market investments to supplement their retirements.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com