Some Chinese political observers felt that Deng Xiaoping, while being the greatest contributor to the flourishing success of today’s China, made two important mistakes in his life. The first is to belief heavily in the reports of Li Peng and Chen Xitong to use military forces to clamp down on the protesting students during the June 4 Incident at Tiananmen in 1989. The second is to choose a successor, after the Tiananmen Incident, who is an extreme capitalist-natured person as the secretary general – Jiang Zemin. While Deng has always proclaimed himself to be a great observer, he was not able to foretell Jiang’s instinct to deviate away from socialism.
As a result of the Tiananmen Incident, Jiang rose to power within the CCP. Deng wanted him to correct the corrupted situation during the pre-Tiananmen days. However, even before the passing away of Deng, wide activities of corruption were to take place in the Chinese government. According to analysts, Jiang’s son – Jiang Mianheng (姜绵恒) – was one of those that benefited materially from both being an official and a businessman.
If we study the corruption situation in the pre-1989 days, the students protested against corruption and bureaucratism only due to Deng Pufang (邓普方) organizing a few companies making use of the loophole during the transition period between planned to market economy to generate unlawful income for him. However, Deng Pufang’s company at that time was a State Owned Enterprise. All proceeds will eventually go to the Chinese handicapped funds. Yet, the company was still scrutinized publicly and was “cleansed” and reorganized in September 1988.
The amount of questionable funds that is taking place twenty years later is anytime greater in magnitude as compared to Deng Pufang’s case. The princelings listed by observers include Jiang Mianheng (as first described above), Li Xiaolin[1], Zeng Wei[2], Zhu Yunlai[3], Wen Yunsong[4]. And the list goes on. The above-mentioned characters of paramount family backgrounds have all became wealthy whether as a businessman or as a government official. While there are many accusations of the legality issue of their getting rich, this paper will not indulge in non-referenced speculations, which will be left to the many tabloids that can do a much better job in this.
In comparison to 1989, the current corruption situation within the government officials is many times more intense. Some famously reported cases include that of Chen Liangyu[5], Zhu Junyi[6] and Du Shicheng[7]. As a result, the repercussion is also much bigger than in 1989. In fact, the events commemorating the June 4 incident both in China and overseas are growing in strength these days as a result of the growing corruption.
While Deng has been criticized for allowing the Tiananmen massacre, he certainly demonstrated his integrity in the areas of corruption. When Zhao Ziyang reported to Deng about the civilians’ dissatisfaction of the families of senior cadres being involved in business, Deng immediately dictated that anti-corruption activities should start from their own families. As a result, Deng Pufang’s company was persecuted. Zhao Ziyang also followed suit by calling for investigation against his son Zhao Dajun’s (赵大军) company. The widely speculated joke about the reaction of Jiang Zemin today should someone report to him about people’s dissatisfaction against the princelings is that he will order the speculators to be arrested first.
(………… coming up next: The new Four Elite Families ……………..)
[1] Daughter of Li Peng. Please refer to previous piece on Li Peng for more information.
[2] Son of Zeng Qinghong (曾庆红).
[3] Son of former premier Zhu Rongji.
[4] Son of current premier Wen Jiabao.
[5] Chen was the former Shanghai mayor, who is notoriously known to be a protégé of Jiang Zemin.
[6] Zhu has been the protégé of Chen Liangyu for many years and was involved in one of the biggest scandals in China involving the Shanghai Social Security Funds together with Chen.
[7] Du was the former Qingdao mayor who was apprehended for abusing his power and amassing huge fortunes through illegal land sales in Qingdao.
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