Free Republic

Lang Xianping, professor of economics at Chinese University of Hong Kong, had his finance and economics talk show, "Larry Lang Live" on Shanghai Cable TV 1, suspended this past February. He now reveals that his show was suspended on account of his mentioning several times that the social security fund should not be diverted; this drew the attention of the corrupt forces in Shanghai. Chinese officials claim the reason for the show's suspension is that Lang's Mandarin is not standard. Before it was suspended, it had been on the air for one and a half years. Lang's sharp comments, along...

SHANGHAI — For two years, Larry Lang relished his role as China's business talk-show king. On Friday night television, the Taiwan-born host of "Larry Lang Live" railed against corporate corruption and other ills of China's market reforms. The clean-cut, telegenic finance professor boiled economics down to ordinary chatter and he struck a nerve with folks disenchanted with the sagging stock market and widening income disparity. But this month, Chinese officials pulled the plug on his program — the latest move by Beijing to censor influential critics of its policies and to control information disseminated to the public. In the last...