China Police Probe Gun Found in FedEx Package

(Bloomberg) --

Police in Fujian province have started an investigation into a package containing a gun delivered by FedEx Corp. to a company in China, state media Xinhua News Agency reported.

The weapon is in police possession, according to Xinhua.

FedEx notified authorities about the shipment on June 14, the company said in a statement emailed to Bloomberg. “We take this matter seriously, and will continue to fully cooperate,” spokeswoman Davina Cole said in the statement, which gave no other details.

The news agency report confirmed an earlier tweet by Hu Xijin, Global Times editor-in-chief, who said the package was sent from a U.S. client to a sporting goods company in the southeastern province of Fujian. He didn’t say where he got the information.

China has been preparing to add FedEx to a blacklist of so-called unreliable entities, people familiar with the matter have said. The Memphis, Tennessee-based courier first drew the ire of Chinese officials after Huawei Technologies Co. said that documents it asked to be shipped from Japan to China were instead diverted to the U.S. without authorization.

The Global Times is a Chinese tabloid run by the People’s Daily, which is the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party. Hu has said the paper voices opinions that official sources can’t, and often cites sources without identifying them.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Lulu Shen in Shanghai at lshen37@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Shamim Adam at sadam2@bloomberg.net, Stanley James

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With assistance from Bloomberg