The alleged family fortune of Chinese Premier Li Qiang has been made public on the internet by an anonymous source.
The unverified information published on an overseas Chinese platform on Sept. 22 implies that the family fortune is as high as 90 billion yuan (about $12.3 billion).
As the second-ranking figure in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Li Qiang’s private information should be highly confidential.
Alleged details of the premier’s wife and daughter were also made public, with the post providing supposed details about his wife, Lin Huan, including her date of birth, the college she graduated from, and her registered home address.
Based on current market conditions, a luxury apartment under her name in the released information is worth 24 million yuan (approximately $3.28 million).
In addition, Ms. Lin was said to have maintained close relationships with more than a dozen business people and groups, including Gao Hongbing, the director of Alibaba Research Institute.
The online expose also claimed that through Lin Huan’s connection to Gao Hongbing, Li Qiang has invested at least 20 billion yuan (about $2.74 billion) in Jack Ma’s Ant Group, a financial service corporation, with the amount potentially reaching 50 billion yuan (about $6.85 billion).
Xi ‘Can’t Fully Trust Li’
The author of the post also claimed that Chinese leader Xi Jinping trusted Li Qiang because Li Ying is Mr. Xi’s goddaughter, but at the same time, Mr. Xi can’t fully trust Li Qiang because his wife Lin Hua is too close to Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group.It was through Lin Huan, Gao Hongbing, and others that Li Qiang persuaded Jack Ma to return to China in a bid to reverse the perception that China’s economic environment was deteriorating, the post revealed.
Li Qiang had openly praised Jack Ma and bragged about their close personal relationship on several occasions before Alibaba Group and Ant Group were disciplined by central authorities.
It is widely believed that Jack Ma’s criticism of Chinese regulators in 2020 deeply irritated Mr. Xi.
Claims that Daughter’s Company Wins Govt Contracts
Li Qiang’s daughter Li Ying, born in 1988, majored in architecture in college and she currently works in an architectural firm founded in September 2011 with a registered capital of US $300,000, according to the online expose.The post’s author further claimed that during Li Qiang’s tenure as the governor of Zhejiang Province, Li Ying’s architectural firm had won several government contracts in the province, including Ningbo City Library and Ningbo Daily Group’s headquarters building.
The author implied that her company was able to win bids for these large architectural projects through Li Qiang’s influence.
Moreover, the company’s legal representative is said to be Hardie Christopher Forbes, a British national. The author suspects that Mr. Forbes is Li Ying’s husband.
In communist China, having a Westerner as one’s son-in-law or daughter-in-law imposes a stigma on any high-ranking official, and his loyalty would be questionable.
The author also claimed that although Li Ying won the bid for several projects in Shanghai, Ningbo, and Beijing, she failed to bid for a project in Shenzhen, Guangdong, because Shenzhen is the territory of Qi Qiaoqiao, Mr. Xi’s elder sister.
Party Infighting
In an interview with The Epoch Times, Li Hengqing, a scholar at the Institute for Information and Strategic Studies in Washington, D.C., said the incident reflects a fierce battle among the top echelons of the CCP.He said that after the CCP’s 20th National Congress held in October last year, all other factions were either taken down or kicked out, leaving officials in the Xi faction in power only. Mr. Xi has since become the paramount leader with absolute authority.
“Xi Jinping personally selected members of the CCP Central Committee as well as provincial and ministerial officials after conducting interviews. On the surface, they all follow Xi Jinping’s lead, but in reality, they are fighting among themselves,” Li Hengqing said.
U.S.-based current affairs commentator Chen Pekong agrees that there is reason to suspect that the source of this information may be from within the Xi faction, as it seems unlikely that anti-Xi factions can collect such detailed information.
At the same time, it can’t be ruled out that Mr. Xi himself wants to punish Li Qiang.
“Now there is a saying that Xi Jinping is in a wild rage and specifically targets his cronies because he thinks that betrayal by his cronies is the most intolerable,” Mr. Chen said.
Back in October last year, when Mr. Xi and his loyalists took control of the CCP’s top power structure, China expert Shi Shan predicted that Mr. Xi’s monopoly on power might bring about a struggle amongst his inner circle, just like those in Mao Zedong’s time.
On Oct. 22, 2022, in an interview with NTD TV, a sister publication of The Epoch Times, Mr. Shi said, “The struggle within the Xi faction will resemble the struggle within Mao Zedong’s cronies during the Cultural Revolution. Among Mao’s cronies, some even died more tragically than Mao’s political opponents.”
