China’s ‘Right-Wing’ Party Tries to Change System From Within

Several overseas China experts recently brought to light the existence of a little-known right wing opposition party in China.
China’s ‘Right-Wing’ Party Tries to Change System From Within
Chinese human rights activist Wei Jingsheng testifies before the US House of Representatives' Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission on September 29, 2009 in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Mandel NGAN/Getty Images)
3/22/2011
Updated:
10/1/2015

<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/91243185.jpg" alt="Chinese human rights activist Wei Jingsheng testifies before the US House of Representatives' Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission on September 29, 2009 in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Mandel NGAN/Getty Images)" title="Chinese human rights activist Wei Jingsheng testifies before the US House of Representatives' Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission on September 29, 2009 in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Mandel NGAN/Getty Images)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1806498"/></a>
Chinese human rights activist Wei Jingsheng testifies before the US House of Representatives' Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission on September 29, 2009 in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Mandel NGAN/Getty Images)

Several overseas China experts recently brought to light the existence of a little-known right wing opposition party in China. The group is not headed up by those whom authorities view as political dissidents: instead, it consists of individuals who have distinguished themselves in the realm of world finance.

Wei Jingsheng, a prominent Chinese human rights activist, gave an impromptu speech in New York earlier in 2010 mentioning that a “new right wing” party had formed in China, trying to work within the system.

“This new right wing party advocates a westernized democratic path for China,” he said, according to Radio France International (RFI) on Jan. 12, 2010.

He added: “It is fully aware of the fact that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) old way of working is no longer effective. It implies that many CCP cadres know the CCP can barely maintain its ruling status.”

The group was established in October 2007 in Hong Kong, where it is registered as a non-profit organization under the name of the Boyuan Foundation.

The foundation’s Board of Directors and advisors come from around the world and have impressive credentials in finance.

The Advisory Committee for the Boyuan Foundation also includes some of China’s business elites, including Yi Gang, Deputy Governor of the People’s Bank of China and Chen Xiaolu, Chairman of the Standard International Investment Management Corporation

Qin Xiao, Council Chairman of the Boyuan Foundation, served as the Chairman of the China Merchants Group (CMG) from 2001 to Aug. 23, 2010. He earned a Doctoral Degree in Economics at the age of 50 from Cambridge University.

The chairman also holds forward-looking views about China’s development. During his speech at the forum, “China’s Economy in 2010,” held on Jan. 7, 2010 at the New York Stock Exchange, Qin openly challenged the official “Chinese model” of economic development.

“Some people believe that the crisis of the past 20 years illustrates that the Chinese model is the best model in the world. I don’t agree with that,” he said. Branding the “so-called ‘Chinese model’” as “developmentalist government” that gets involved in the market and amasses wealth, he said it is full of problems like rent seeking, corruption, and rampant profit and efficiency losses due to an oversized bureaucracy.

China should be based on “the value system” recognized around the world, he said, which includes rationality, liberty, and individual rights. He made the same remarks to Chinese Financial Times.

Qin was asked once about the difference between his ideas about reform and those of Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese dissident currently serving an 11 year sentence in a Chinese prison, charged with inciting subversion to state power. Qin said, “The reform I advocate is within the system.”

Cao An, a commentator with New Tang Dynasty TV , said that this sounds about the same as the dissidents, except that Qin doesn’t attempt to undermine the powers that be.

An article published on China Entrepreneur Network (iceo.com.cn) described Qin as a person who is not afraid of criticizing the regime, sometimes: a hedgehog within the system, who knows when to poke and when to hide.

[email protected]