The daughter of a powerful Chinese Communist Party elder has come out in support of regime leader Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign, the latest member of the class of princelings—sons and daughters of the revolutionary leaders that brought the Party to power—to declare allegiance to the sitting Party chief.
The remarks of Chen Weili, daughter of Chen Yun, one of the most influential Party leaders during the 1980s and 1990s, are significant because they indicate a shifting allegiance among the Chen family clan, which has long reciprocal ties with Jiang Zemin, himself the former Party leader that is the primary target of Xi Jinping’s Party purge.
In a recent question-and-answer session with Party-run news publication China Youth Daily, 73-year-old Chen Weili said her father, “stringently” dealt with corrupt cadres in the late 1970s to the 1980s when he was first secretary of the Central Committee for Discipline Inspection—the Party’s anti-corruption watchdog.
“Keep clean finances, live an honest lifestyle, do not ask about things you are not supposed to know, and do not touch a single penny of public money. Even if they don’t investigate it now, they will in the future,” Chen recalled her father saying.
Chen Yun’s longevity in top Party leadership—he survived the brutal political purges during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution and Deng Xiaoping’s leadership transition—was often attributed to his relative probity, and willingness to submit his own interests to that of the Party.
“We all absolutely support the current anti-corruption campaign,” Chen Weili said. The trend of corrupt Party officials “cannot be left alone,” and their power “must be checked.”
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Before Chen Weili’s comments, the Chen family group tended to lean toward Jiang Zemin and his extensive political faction in the Party, as evidenced by the reciprocal granting of favor between the clans.
In the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Chen Yun is known to have supported Jiang Zemin as a replacement for reformist Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang.
Jiang never forget the gesture. During a symposium to commemorate the 90th birthday of the recently deceased Chen in May 1995, Jiang called his political patron “one of the foremost founders and creators of China’s socialist economy”—praise that seemed to eclipse Jiang’s appraisal of Deng.
