27 of Richest Chinese Featured in Hurun Report Jailed

In the 15 years, between 1999 and 2013, twenty-seven Chinese who made it on the Hurun China Rich list, have ended up in jail.
27 of Richest Chinese Featured in Hurun Report Jailed
NTD Television
4/27/2014
Updated:
5/1/2014

In the 15 years, between 1999 and 2013, twenty-seven, or 1.2 percent, of the 2,188 Chinese who made it on the Hurun China Rich list, have ended up in jail. More than half of them were jailed for more than 10 years, the Hurun Report said in a special report on April 19.

The average age of those sentenced was 46. Corruption and bribery, property violation, and disrupting the managerial order of companies and enterprises were the three main charges against them. Offering a bribe was the most often cited charge.

Political Power Struggle

“Corrupt officials fill Chinese society today,” China commentator, Lan Su, told NTD. “Any decent sized business would require dealing with the government. To work with these corrupt officials, how can you balance the books? Should it be [posted under] gray income or gray expenses?” Lan asked.

Lan said there is hardly a clean Chinese official. Even the anti-corruption campaign is selectively directed against political opponents. Those rich businessmen become the sacrifice in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) internal struggles.

Take Huang Guangyu, for example, who was the Hurun Report’s richest Chinese in 2005. Huang was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment for crimes of illegal business operations, insider trading, and bribery. Sources from the State Council revealed that Huang’s case was intended to help overthrow Zheng Shaodong and Zhou Yongkang through the coordinated work of the Minister of Public Security, Meng Jianzhu, and former Premier Wen Jiabao. 

Corrupt Environment

Li Shanjian, another China commentator, told NTD: “Rich Chinese have only emerged in recent years. It is not because they were very smart or capable, and their wealth is not inherited either. They have become the rich Chinese mostly because of the collusion of money and power--through improper means.”

Shanxi businesswoman Ding Shumiao was indicted for bribing Minister of Railways, Liu Zhijun, with 49 million yuan, and for collecting illegal operating funds of 178.8 billion yuan. 

Former Shanghai billionaires Zhou Zhengyi and Zhang Rongkun became rich overnight because of their relationship with high officials, i.e. Chen Liangyu, Huang Ju, and Jiang Zemin. Despite their high-level connections, the two were sentenced to 16 years and 19 years, respectively, on account of complicity when Chen Liangyu and Huang Ju themselves were felled.

Party Connections

A local Shanghai newspaper reported a research paper conducted by Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences in January about where the Chinese rich came from. Researcher Lu Peng investigated the rich Chinese on the Hurun Report and Forbes’ rich lists between 2003 and 2012. 

Lu found that the fathers of 15.6 percent of the richest were cadres in the communist party or the enterprise units. 

For Example: Chinese tycoon Rong Zhijian’s father, Rong Yiren, was Vice President of the regime between 1993 and 1998. China’s richest person Wang Jianlin’s father was once the Vice Chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region. 

In addition, 43.6 percent of rich Chinese have worked within the regime. 

For Example: Ye Chenghai had been on the Shenzhen Municipal Standing Committee and vice mayor of Shenzhen. Huang Hongsheng was the deputy General Manager of China National Electronics Import & Export South-China Co.

According to commentator Li Shanjian, the real rich Chinese are those “red families” whose assets are hidden from outsiders and difficult to calculate.

Bloomberg, in 2012, reported on three such “red family” children: Wang Jun, son of General Wang Zhen; He Ping, son-in-law of Deng Xiaoping; and Chen Yuan, the son of Mao’s economic tsar, Chen Yun. These three headed, or still run, state-owned companies with combined assets of about US$1.6 trillion in 2011.

This year, international media has exposed the CCP’s “red nobility” offshore companies, used to transfer and hide huge assets. An estimated $4 trillion in untraced assets may have left China since 2000. 

Read original NTD Television report.