紐約時報: ‘Princelings’ in China Use Family Ties to Gain Riches
By DAVID BARBOZA and SHARON LaFRANIERE
Published: May 17, 2012 132 Comments
SHANGHAI — The Hollywood studio DreamWorks Animation recently announced a bold move to crack China’s
tightly protected film industry: a $330 million deal to create a
Shanghai animation studio that might one day rival the California shops
that turn out hits like “Kung Fu Panda” and “The Incredibles.”
What DreamWorks did not showcase, however, was one of its newest — and
most important — Chinese partners: Jiang Mianheng, the 61-year-old son
of Jiang Zemin, the former Communist Party leader and the most powerful
political kingmaker of China’s last two decades.
The younger Mr. Jiang’s coups have included ventures with Microsoft and
Nokia and oversight of a clutch of state-backed investment vehicles that
have major interests in telecommunications, semiconductors and
construction projects.
That a dealmaker like Mr. Jiang would be included in an undertaking like
that of DreamWorks is almost a given in today’s China. Analysts say
this is how the Communist Party shares the spoils, allowing the
relatives of senior leaders to cash in on one of the biggest economic
booms in history.
As the scandal over Bo Xilai continues to reverberate, the authorities
here are eager to paint Mr. Bo, a fallen leader who was one of 25
members of China’s ruling Politburo, as a rogue operator who abused his
power, even as his family members accumulated a substantial fortune.
But evidence is mounting that the relatives of other current and former
senior officials have also amassed vast wealth, often playing central
roles in businesses closely entwined with the state, including those
involved in finance, energy, domestic security, telecommunications and
entertainment. Many of these so-called princelings also serve as
middlemen to a host of global companies and wealthy tycoons eager to do
business in China.
“Whenever there is something profitable that emerges in the economy,
they’ll be at the front of the queue,” said Minxin Pei, an expert on
China’s leadership and professor of government at Claremont McKenna
College in California. “They’ve gotten into private equity, state-owned
enterprises, natural resources — you name it.”
For example, Wen Yunsong, the son of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, heads a
state-owned company that boasts that it will soon be Asia’s largest
satellite communications operator. President Hu Jintao’s son, Hu
Haifeng, once managed a state-controlled firm that held a monopoly on
security scanners used in China’s airports, shipping ports and subway
stations. And in 2006, Feng Shaodong, the son-in-law of Wu Bangguo, the
party’s second-ranking official, helped Merrill Lynch win a deal to
arrange the $22 billion public listing of the giant state-run bank
I.C.B.C., in what became the world’s largest initial public stock
offering.
Much of the income earned by families of senior leaders may be entirely
legal. But it is all but impossible to distinguish between legitimate
and ill-gotten gains because there is no public disclosure of the wealth
of officials and their relatives. Conflict-of-interest laws are weak or
nonexistent. And the business dealings of the political elite are
heavily censored in the state-controlled news media.
The spoils system, for all the efforts to keep a lid on it, poses a
fundamental challenge to the legitimacy of the Communist Party. As the
state’s business has become increasingly intertwined with a class of
families sometimes called the Red Nobility, analysts say the potential
exists for a backlash against an increasingly entrenched elite. They
also point to the risk that national policies may be subverted by
leaders and former leaders, many of whom exert influence long after
their retirement, acting to protect their own interests.
Chinese officials and their relatives rarely discuss such a delicate
issue publicly. The New York Times made repeated attempts to reach
public officials and their relatives for this article, often through
their companies. None of those reached agreed to comment on the record.
DreamWorks and Microsoft declined to comment about their relationship with Mr. Jiang. ...
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