Báo New York Times số ngày 17 tháng 06 đã đăng một bài điều tra cho
thấy gia tộc họ Tập đáng tẩu tán hàng trăm triệu đô-la ra khỏi các vụ
đầu tư béo bở để bố già tránh không còn bị gièm pha mà hăng hái chống
tham nhũng, mục tiêu nhằm hạ gục các đối thủ chính trị trong nước.
Từ năm 2012 nhiều tài liêụ cho thấy chị ruột và anh rể của nhà lãnh
đạo Trung Quốc đã bán đi phần hùn trong ít nhất là 10 công ty chuyên về
nhà đất và khoáng sản. Số tiền thu vào được chuyển cho một cộng sự viên
thân tín giữ dùm. Nhưng dù đã tẩu tán một phần lớn tài sản cặp vợ chồng
này và con gái Zhang Yannan vẫn còn hàng chục triệu đô-la đầu tư vào nhiều cơ sở địa
ốc khác. (Xem bài gốc Anh ngữ)
Tập Cận Bình
Giai cấp tư bản đỏ tại Hoa Lục đã tích tụ hàng tỷ đô-la từ khi nhà
nước tư nhân hoá xí nghiệp quốc doanh trong đó gồm cả công ty khai thác
đất hiếm mà gia đình họ Tập có phần hùn khá lớn. Mỗi trong số bốn đại
gia tộc có liên hệ với Bộ Chính Trị thu vào ít nhất 150 triệu USD từ
2007-12, trong đó có họ hàng của Tập Cận Bình và cựu thủ tướng Ôn Gia
Bảo.
Riêng Tập Cận Bình và vợ dù không bị phanh phui hối mại quyền thế,
nhưng họ Tập một mặt hô hào dân chúng chống tham nhũng đồng thời lại bỏ
tù đàn áp khắc khe các nhà tranh đấu đòi hỏi giới lãnh đạo công khai hoá
tài sản. Tiêu biểu là trường hợp của luật sư Xu Zhihong bị tuyên án 4
năm tù về tội phá rối trật tự.
Từ ngày lên nắm quyền họ Tập chứng tỏ là nhà lãnh đạo tài cao chí
lớn. Chiến lược đề ra đủ để mọi người khác sờn lòng: đánh tham nhũng tận
gốc; tái cấu trúc nền kinh tế từ đầu tư sang tiêu thụ; bành trướng ra
Đông Á; hoà diụ với Nga khi cần đối đầu với Tây Phương. Nhưng để thực
hiện các chương trình táo bạo này Tập Cận Bình phải tập trung quyền hành
và đánh gục vây cánh của Ôn Gia Bảo và Chu Vĩnh Khang. Họ Tập lâm vào
thế cưỡi cọp, nếu sau này hết nhiệm kỳ xuống chức thì sợ bị phe phái
khác nổi lên trả thù thanh toán...
......
As China’s Leader Fights Graft, His Relatives Shed Assets
President Xi Jinping of China
in Shanghai last month. Mr. Xi's family members have divested a
significant portion of their fortunes, which may put him on a stronger
footing as he oversees an anticorruption drive.Credit
Pool photo by Aly Song
HONG
KONG — As President Xi Jinping of China prepares to tackle what may be
the biggest cases of official corruption in more than six decades of
Communist Party rule, new evidence suggests that he has been pushing his
own family to sell hundreds of millions of dollars in investments,
reducing his own political vulnerability.
In January of last year, just after Mr. Xi took power,
his older sister and brother-in-law finalized the sale of their 50
percent stake in a Beijing investment company they had set up in
partnership with a state-owned bank. According to the billionaire
financier Xiao Jianhua, who co-founded the company that bought the
stake, the move was part of a continuing effort by the family to exit
investments.
They did it “for the family,” Mr. Xiao’s spokeswoman said in a statement.
A
review of Chinese records shows that there is evidence to back up Mr.
Xiao’s claim. From 2012 until this year, Mr. Xi’s sister Qi Qiaoqiao and
brother-in-law Deng Jiagui sold investments in at least 10 companies,
mostly focused on mining and real estate. In all, the companies the
couple sold, liquidated or, in one case, transferred to a close business
associate, are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, part of a fortune
documented in a June 2012 report by Bloomberg News.
The villa in Hong Kong owned by the niece of President Xi Jinping, Zhang Yannan.Credit
Eric Rechsteiner for The New York Times
No
investment stakes have been tied directly to Mr. Xi or his wife and
daughter. But the extensive business activities of his sister and
brother-in-law are part of a widespread pattern among relatives of the
Politburo elite, who have built up considerable fortunes by trading on
their family’s political standing.
After
taking power, Mr. Xi vowed to do battle with the “tigers and flies” —
senior and petty officials engaged in corrupt or unseemly business
activities — to shore up the party’s credibility. But there are doubts
that he could carry out a wholesale crackdown on financial dealings by
ruling families, who are deeply enmeshed in the state-driven business
culture of the country.
Records
show Ms. Qi; her husband, Mr. Deng; and her daughter Zhang Yannan still
hold tens of millions of dollars in company shares and real estate,
including a villa overlooking Hong Kong’s exclusive Repulse Bay. It is
also unclear whether the price paid to them for the investments they did
sell resulted in a profit or a loss — meaning it is not clear if Mr.
Xi’s order to exit investments amounted to a hardship for his relatives.
Still,
the move to divest a significant portion of their fortune may put Mr.
Xi on stronger footing as he oversees his anticorruption drive. That
effort includes an undisputed “tiger,” the former security chief Zhou Yongkang, who was detained in December, people familiar with the situation have told The New York Times.
Ding
Xueliang, a professor of politics at Hong Kong University of Science
and Technology, said party and government officials had told him on a
recent trip he took to mainland China that Mr. Xi had told his family to
get out of their investments.
“It
is a minimum thing — he must do this,” Mr. Ding said. “If he doesn’t do
this, it is very hard for him to convince other families to be more
self-disciplined.”
The
elite ruling families of China have accumulated billions of dollars in
assets, including company shares and real estate, in the past decade as
China’s economy has boomed. Many of the investments are in areas such as
mining, infrastructure and property that involve the privatization of
formerly state-owned assets, including a rare-earth mining company that
until recently was partly owned by Mr. Deng.
At
least four families among the nine-man Politburo Standing Committee
that ruled the country from 2007 to 2012 each owned or controlled
documented assets in excess of $150 million, including relatives of Mr.
Xi, former Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, Mr. Zhou and Jia Qinglin, the
former fourth-ranked party member.
That
accumulation of wealth has led to calls for officials to disclose their
assets amid surging income inequality that is among the highest in the
world and far greater than in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan: neighbors
that, unlike China, do not have Communist roots.
The
subject remains politically charged in China. Even while Mr. Xi’s
relatives were selling off assets, those calling publicly for more
disclosure have been punished, including the lawyer Xu Zhiyong,
who was given a four-year jail sentence for gathering crowds to disturb
public order. The websites of The Times and Bloomberg, which have both
reported on elite shareholdings, have been blocked in China for many months.
Ms.
Qi, who uses her mother’s last name and also goes by the name Qi
Lianxin, and her husband began selling off assets owned by their
principal Beijing holding company, the Qinchuan Dadi Investment Company,
in late 2012, records filed with the country’s State Administration of
Industry and Commerce show. Qinchuan was set up in the weeks after Mr.
Xi ascended to the Politburo Standing Committee in 2007 with $2.7
million in investments, ballooning to $156 million four years later.
Zhang Yannan's villa overlooks Hong Kong’s exclusive Repulse Bay.Credit
Eric Rechsteiner for The New York Times
At
least eight of the 11 investments that Qinchuan disclosed at the end of
2011 are no longer owned by the company, records show.
Two
of the Qinchuan investments were bought by companies run by Shi Weixue,
a real estate executive who made headlines recently for his project to
build a resort complex on the tropical island of Hainan, including a “seven-star hotel,”
shaped like apple trees. Mr. Shi’s Beijing-based property company,
Zhonglianya, was also the majority investor in a Qinchuan-invested
property company in the Hubei Province of central China that was
liquidated last year.
Luo
Zhehong, a property and mining executive from Zhejiang Province in
eastern China, where Mr. Xi served as the top official from 2002 to
2007, owned a mining company with Qinchuan in Qinghai Province in
western China. Records show that he acquired Qinchuan’s 35 percent stake
and also bought out its share in a Beijing investment company.
Mr.
Shi and Mr. Luo were not available to comment. Ms. Qi and Mr. Deng did
not respond to faxed questions asking about their investments.
Mr. Xiao, in his statement, said his company had contacted Qinchuan about its asset disposals after the publication this month of an article in The Times about his own business empire and political ties.
Shareholders
of the company “voluntarily quit their legitimately operated business
which they worked very hard to found, costing them their input or
bringing them a huge loss,” Mr. Xiao said through a spokeswoman.
Mr.
Deng, through a Shanghai holding company, also owned more than
one-sixth of a rare-earth mining company in the Jiangxi Province of
eastern China that last year reported owning assets of about $2.1
billion. Records show that he is no longer a shareholder in the Shanghai
company, and even if he were, it no longer owns a stake in the mining
company.
In
April, that stake was taken over by a state-owned aviation investment
company. Rare earths go into critical components in electric cars and
wind turbines.
Ms.
Qi, her daughter Ms. Zhang and Mr. Deng still own many companies across
China, stretching from Hainan in the south to Beijing in the north.
Records examined this month show the couple still owns their
Shenzhen-based investment company, Yuanwei, which holds tens of millions
of dollars in assets.
Ms.
Zhang also remains the owner of a spacious villa in Hong Kong that
records show she bought in early 2009, during the depths of the global
financial crisis, for $19.3 million. Since then, prices have appreciated
significantly.
A
visit to the villa this month suggested that it had been vacant for
many years. It is falling into disrepair, with the subtropical Hong Kong
foliage slowly reclaiming the driveway and sprouting out from below the
black and gold steel gate. A villa on the same street recently listed for 238 million Hong Kong dollars, or more than $30 million.
And
the couple did not sell three of its most valuable assets held by
Qinchuan, including two infrastructure companies in the city of
Xiangyang in Hubei Province. The three assets are together worth at
least $234 million.
But
on Oct. 8, after no changes in its shareholding structure for almost
six years, ownership of Qinchuan itself was transferred out of the
family and into the hands of a longtime business associate, Xu Zaisheng,
documents filed with the Chinese government show.
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