IT HAS TO count as one of the stories of the year.

In June, the Bloomberg financial news agency released a report which said that close relatives of China’s anointed supreme leader Xi Jinping have companies with €300 million in assets, an 18 per cent indirect stake in a rare-earths firm with €1.4 billion in assets and a €16 million holding in a tech company.

The Chinese government responded by blocking Bloomberg’s news website, and it remains blocked by China’s state censors more than a month after it detailed the riches scooped up by Xi’s family.

While news sites are often blocked at times of great sensitivity, such as Tibetan anniversaries or during periods of public disturbance, this is a lengthy block.

The Xi Jinping story was a great piece of reporting, using publicly available information to compile the details and avoiding referring to unnamed sources, a practice which blights much news reporting in China but is often necessary because of the culture of secrecy.

While the report made no link between Mr Xi, his wife, folk singer Peng Liyuan, or their daughter and the multibillion euro assets held by his extended family, it was a major embarrassment for the man who will become the most powerful leader in China in the next few months.

The atmosphere in Chinese political circles is particularly jittery now ahead of the power transition at the forthcoming 18th Communist Party congress. The purge in March of Bo Xilai as party chief of China’s biggest municipality, Chongqing, over alleged corruption and last week’s murder trial involving his wife, Gu Kailai, has also contributed to raised tensions.

Then came a story out of the United States which seemed to link major hacking rings to China, which were easily able to break into the email account of European Council president Herman Van Rompuy.

According to reports, Beijing has cancelled meetings between financial regulators, bank officials and Matt Winkler, Bloomberg’s editor-in-chief, and some Bloomberg clients have been visited by investigators.

Bloomberg employees have also apparently been subject to the attentions of the state security apparatus.

Bloomberg’s golden goose is its terminals, which traders treat as the oracle. They are used by state-owned banks and government bodies alike in China, and while the website is important, it remains to be seen if the clampdown will ultimately end up hurting terminal sales.