Yuan Hongbing is a former Chinese law professor; he now lives in exile, penning books about corruption in China and the Communist Party’s plans to subvert Taiwan. He also maintains a network of contacts in the mainland. In a recent interview with the overseas Chinese-language media outlet Mingjing, Yuan claimed that a well-known Chinese billionaire, Xiao Jianhua, was involved in China’s stock market crash of summer 2015.
Yuan says that he knew Xiao Jianhua from their time together at Peking University, where Xiao was the youngest law student there in 1986, matriculating at age 15. Yuan at the time was part of the university’s faculty, and was director of that year’s law student body. He became acquainted with Xiao and says he even briefly employed him, at Peking University, after Xiao graduated. He said that they stayed in touch for some years afterwards.
In the interview he makes reference to key political figures in China, including Zeng Qinghong, the consigliere to former Party leader Jiang Zemin, Chen Yun, one of the Party’s godfather figures, and many others, all of whom he says Xiao was financially involved with. He claims that Xiao helped to engineer the 2015 stock meltdown as a way of striking back against Wang Qishan’s anti-corruption campaign. Following the crash, numerous figures in the financial sector were hauled in for questioning by anti-corruption investigators.
Following are translated excerpts from Yuan Hongbing’s interview with Mingjing, published online on May 25.
“Xiao Jianhua was once very close to Zeng Qinghong’s family — Zeng Qinghong’s son is Zeng Wei. He was also very close to Jiang Zemin’s family, as well as Zhang Dejiang’s family, Zhang Gaoli’s family and Liu Yunshan’s family.
“Among families of current and former Politburo members, and current and past standing committee members, the majority used Xiao Jiahua as their front man.
