It will come as no surprise to Chinese citizens that Mr Wen and his family are very rich. They expect it of their leaders. It has always been thus. What will surprise many of them is the enormous scale of the wealth. This then will raise the thought as to whether other leaders are also enjoying such largesse which – at the end of the day – comes from the pockets of the hard working citizens.
NY Times: “Two lawyers who said they represented the family of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China have issued a statement disputing aspects of a New York Times article about the family’s wealth, a rare instance of a powerful Chinese political family responding directly to a foreign media report.
The statement, published in The South China Morning Post on Sunday, said, “The so-called ‘hidden riches’ of Wen Jiabao’s family members in The New York Times’s report” did not exist.
After criticizing several points in the article, the statement hinted at the possibility of future legal action. “We will continue to make clarifications regarding untrue reports by The New York Times, and reserve the right to hold it legally responsible,” the statement said.
The statement reported in The Post, a Hong Kong newspaper, has not been obtained directly by The Times.
The statement was not a sweeping denial of the article. The statement acknowledged that some family members were active in business and that they “are responsible for all their own business activities.”
While the statement disputed that Mr. Wen’s mother had held assets, it did not address the calculation in the article that the family had controlled assets worth at least $2.7 billion.”
via Chinese Premier’s Family Disputes Article on Riches – NYTimes.com.
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 