Who nominated them? “The Chinese Communist Party’s Power Behind “Maotai Academician

Behind the “Maotai academician” controversy lies the Chinese Communist Party‘s personnel code and many powerful families.

The recent “Maotai Academician” controversy in Guizhou has sparked a lot of public debate. But what is less known is that behind the truth of Maotai academicians’ shortlisting, there is also a hidden code of the Chinese Communist Party’s personnel and many powerful families.

Guizhou explodes “Maotai academician” controversy internal attitude of the Chinese Communist Party is not the same

On February 9 this year, the Guizhou Provincial Science Association announced that it would recommend four people, including Wang Li, the chief engineer of Maotai, as candidates for membership of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in Guizhou Province in 2021. When the news came out, public opinion was in an uproar.

According to the Guizhou Science Association, Wang Li is the chief engineer and chief quality officer of Maotai, and her research direction is fermentation and light biotechnology. According to the Guizhou Maotai micro-signal, Wang Li was selected as a Chinese wine master, chief liquor taster and Chinese master wine judge.

Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the highest academic title in engineering science established by the Chinese Communist Party, is co-opted every two years. The fact that a wine taster was selected as an academician, which represents the highest honor in engineering science in China, has led to a wave of bad comments about the Maotai Group and the CCP’s science and technology system.

A group photo of some members of the first class of Academicians of the Academia Sinica of the Republic of China on September 23, 1948; a star-studded group of Academicians of that class. (Public Domain/Wikipedia)

An article on the mainland network reviewed the list of the first academicians of the Academia Sinica selected in 1948, from Li Siguang, Zhu Kezhen, Hua Luogeng, to Hu Shi, Fu Sian, Chen Yinqian, 81 academicians shining in a group of stars, truly representing the highest level of Chinese academia. The web article jokingly said that the selection of Maotai academicians is a call for the whole country to “get drunk and dream of death”.

Even within the Chinese Communist Party, there are different attitudes.

In response to the fervor of the people, the Guizhou Provincial Science Association responded on February 18 that the recommended candidates met the eligibility conditions for declaration; however, on February 20, the Guizhou Association of Science and Technology suspected that the article on the proposed selection of Maotai’s chief engineer was removed from the official website.

On February 18, the Chinese Academy of Engineering also responded, saying that the chief engineer of Maotai was in the public announcement stage recommended by the local science association, and was not yet a valid candidate for the 2021 academician co-option.

At the same Time, the Guizhou authorities have a strong attitude.

(Screenshot of WeChat public number of Guizhou Daily, the organ of Guizhou Provincial Party Committee)

On February 20, Guizhou Daily, an organ of the Guizhou Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, made a strong statement for “Maotai academicians” on its WeChat public number, saying that the candidacy of “Maotai academicians” should not be taken lightly, and dismissed the different opinions of netizens as ” The “Maotai academician” should not be belittled, and the different opinions of netizens will be denounced as “indiscriminate and insensitive mockery.

Who nominated the “Maotai academician”?

According to the first financial report of the land media, on February 8, Guizhou Provincial Science Association held a review meeting for the candidates of Guizhou Province to elect the academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2021. Song Bao’an, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, deputy secretary of the party committee and president of Guizhou University, vice chairman of the provincial science association, and a total of 12 experts in related fields, proposed to select Wang Li and four others as candidates for membership of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in Guizhou Province. Guizhou Provincial Science Association is a local organization of the Chinese Association for Science and Technology, led by the CPC Guizhou Provincial Committee.

Public information shows that the total number of co-opted members of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2021 does not exceed 88. According to the “Implementation Measures for the Co-option of Academicians of the Chinese Academy of Engineering”, there are two ways to nominate candidates for co-option of academicians by the CSU organizations. One is the relevant national societies under the Chinese Association for Science and Technology is responsible for recommending candidates in the discipline (professional) field; the other is the provincial science associations recommend candidates in their administrative regions.

However, these two types of candidates are not official candidates yet, and need to go through two rounds of evaluation before the official list of candidates can be produced; then they have to be reviewed by the Bureau of the Academy of Engineering, and then the final election will be conducted by all voting members of the Academy, and finally the academicians of the Chinese Academy of Engineering will be elected.

In fact, this is not the first time that the Chinese Communist Party’s “Chinese academicians” have been the subject of criticism.

In 2011, Xie Jianping, director of the Zhengzhou Tobacco Research Institute of the China National Tobacco Corporation, was elected as an academician, which also sparked a public debate. The following year, nearly 100 academicians sent a joint letter to the Bureau of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, requesting that the qualifications of “tobacco academicians” be reviewed, but to no avail.

Reveal the secret behind Guizhou’s powerful personnel changes and Maotai

In the context of strong civil reaction and a different attitude within the system, why does the Guizhou provincial party committee strongly support Maotai for academicians?

Recently, an article on the mainland network interpreting the Chinese Communist Party’s personnel code inadvertently leaked the secret behind the “Maotai academician”.

The net article “the personnel code behind the relay race against poverty” said Guizhou is “the main battlefield of poverty alleviation”, implying that poverty alleviation is the “personnel code” of Guizhou’s powerful people.

The mainland web article “the personnel code behind the relay race against poverty” (screenshot of the web article)

The article says that at the end of the last century, the old dean of Tsinghua School of Economics and Management promoted the “west-east transmission of electricity”, which enabled Guizhou to develop hydropower resources and benefit greatly from it. 2010, Li and Zhao took over the first and second positions in Guizhou respectively, and their energy was extraordinary, enabling Guizhou’s super infrastructure to continue.

The article implies that in 2012 Li and Zhao were promoted for helping the poor, “Governor Li became Director Li, Governor Zhao became Governor Zhao, and Guizhou thus welcomed a younger, more powerful Governor Chen.”

The old president in the article was Zhu Rongji, the then premier of the Communist Party of China; the governor stood in for the governor, the governor stood in for the secretary of the provincial party committee, Li and Zhao were Li Zhanshu and Zhao Kezhi, and the governor Chen was Chen Miner. In that year, Li Zhanshu was promoted from provincial party secretary to member of the Central Political Bureau and secretary of the Central Secretariat, and Zhao Kezhi was promoted from governor to provincial party secretary.

According to the article, Chen Miner was promoted to Guizhou provincial party secretary in 2015, and “precise poverty alleviation became a political task that must be completed in 2020.”

The slogan “precise poverty alleviation” was proposed by Xi Jinping during his visit to Hunan in November 2013, and in 2015 the Communist Party adopted the “Decision of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on Winning the War on Poverty Alleviation”, in which Xi demanded that all impoverished areas should be well-off by 2020.

The article also pointed out that in 2012, when Chen Miner arrived, 66 of the province’s 88 county-level administrative regions were poor counties. Chen Miner is Xi Jinping’s old ministry in Fujian and Zhejiang, and is valued by Xi. Therefore, after poverty alleviation became a political task in 2015, “another wave of sky-high national resources came to Guizhou to contribute to Guizhou’s poverty alleviation efforts”.

The article implies that poverty alleviation has likewise become a door knocker for Chen Miner’s promotion. Chen Miner was promoted to member of the Central Political Bureau and secretary of the Chongqing Municipal Committee in 2017.

Guizhou’s “Great Leap Forward” out of poverty in 202?

The article also cites official poverty alleviation data from the Communist Party of China, stating that “by the end of 2019, Guizhou had reduced its poverty population by a total of 8.92 million people …… The number of poverty reduction is the highest in the country.”

However, whether the article cites Guizhou’s poverty reduction achievements by the end of 2019, or Guizhou Province and Beijing‘s announcement of “all poverty reduction” by the end of 2020, these CCP poverty reduction achievements are doubly questioned by outsiders.

In Guizhou province, for example, the announcement in November 2020 that “the last nine poor counties will be formally lifted out of poverty” is said to be an impossible task, as the last nine poor counties in the province will be lifted out of poverty within one year.

According to the data from the Poverty Alleviation Office of the State Council of the Communist Party of China, the income standard for poverty eradication in 2020 is an annual per capita income of about 4,000 yuan for farmers. In other words, the per capita income of these nine deep-poverty counties in Guizhou at the end of 2019 is less than 4,000 yuan.

However, according to Guizhou officials, “the average net income per capita of households that escaped poverty was 11,487.39 yuan” in the nine poor counties, a jump of about 7,500 yuan from the previous per capita income of less than 4,000 yuan. This means that in less than 11 months in 2020, when China’s economy was hit hard by the Epidemic, the income of households that escaped poverty in Guizhou has increased 1.8 times.

According to current affairs commentator Li Linyi, the data released by the Guizhou provincial government on poverty eradication in 2020 is the “satellite” and “great leap forward” of the 21st century, and its authenticity is questionable.

Li Linyi analyzed that although the authenticity of Guizhou’s poverty eradication data is doubtful, poverty eradication has indeed become a personnel code for the Communist Party’s power elites in Guizhou province in recent years – stepping on the poor to climb up the ladder has become a way to rise to the top in poor areas.

Li Linyi pointed out that both Chen Miner and the Guizhou provincial party officials who took over later will undoubtedly seek to get rid of poverty performance. So Guizhou Maotai, which is a major financial and tax account in Guizhou province, has become a big moneymaker that the Guizhou authorities have to pay attention to, and even welcome.

Maotai is a big moneymaker for Guizhou government to get rid of poverty

According to the 2019 Social Responsibility Report released by Maotai Group in July last year, Maotai Group achieved 43 billion yuan in tax revenue in 2019, handing over about 18% of the total tax revenue of Guizhou province. Of the taxes paid by the Maotai Group, the share of the central and local governments for corporate income tax is 60/40.

Moutai Group’s 2019 Guizhou Province Social Responsibility Report Release Certificate (web screenshot)

The report also labels Maotai Group as “poverty alleviation”, stating that it “fully assisted Daochen County in its poverty alleviation efforts” and that “2020 is the year when China will decisively win the battle against poverty and build a moderately prosperous society, and it is also the year when Maotai Group The starting year of strengthening the foundation and building a stable and far-reaching society.”

In September 2020, Maotai Group disclosed its financial data for the first half of 2020 to the public for the bond issue. The bond prospectus showed that Maotai Group’s total operating revenue and net profit for the first half of 2020 were 52.87 billion yuan and 25.93 billion yuan respectively, equivalent to a net profit of 140 million yuan a day.

The prospectus also shows that Maotai Group raised 15 billion yuan for the acquisition of part of the equity of Guizhou Expressway; Guizhou Expressway lost 1.9 billion in the first half of last year. Guizhou Expressway and Maotai Group are both state-owned enterprises controlled by the Guizhou Provincial Assets Supervision and Administration Commission. According to the book, Maotai Group not only wants to acquire the serious loss of Guizhou Expressway, but also holds a large number of shares of “Zunyi Maotai Airport” and “Guiyang Longdongbao Airport”, in the past two and a half years, the airport business of Maotai Group has accumulated a loss of 1.293 billion yuan.

In addition to direct equity participation and holding, Maotai Group also undertakes guarantees and loans for state-owned projects. According to the Guizhou government, in October 2018, Maotai Group provided a loan of 10 billion yuan to Guizhou Province Qian Sheng State Assets Management Co.

According to Sohu Finance, Guizhou is an underdeveloped province with limited fiscal revenue and large investment gaps in infrastructure projects, and Maotai, as a provincial state-owned enterprise, has to undertake such long-term projects for the Guizhou provincial treasury.

In addition to sharing long-term expenditures for local finances, Maotai Group is also an ATM for the Guizhou provincial government, which has cashed in more than 60 billion yuan from Guizhou Maotai in the past six months. Guizhou Maotai is the largest subsidiary and the main source of profit for the Maotai Group, which holds 61.76% of its shares.

Guizhou State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission has instructed Maotai Group to transfer a total of 100.48 million shares of Guizhou Maotai to the provincial state-owned capital operation company without compensation at the end of 2019 and 2020. And Guizhou Provincial State-owned Capital Operation Company has significantly reduced its holdings of Guizhou Maotai shares since the second half of 2020, shedding more than 60 billion yuan in cash.

Current affairs commentator Li Linyi analyzed that Maotai Group is the big Gold master of Guizhou provincial government, which directly affects the performance of Guizhou officials to get rid of poverty and promotion. Therefore, Guizhou Maotai elected academicians, will be strongly supported by the Guizhou government, in fact, is a political deal with the Guizhou provincial party committee.

“The hidden power of the Communist Party behind the “Maotai academicians

Behind the academicians of Guizhou Maotai, there are not only hidden codes and political deals, but also the “Maotai Club” in Beijing, and many powerful Communist Party officials behind the scenes.

According to a report by the Chinese media Time Finance, Wang Li, the chief engineer of Maotai, is the disciple of Ji Keliang, the former chairman of Maotai Group, and insiders in Maotai revealed that Wang Li was promoted by Ji Keliang and is Ji Keliang’s “technical successor” in Maotai. The media disclosed that Ji Keliang and Maotai Group were involved with the Jiang faction of the Communist Party.

On December 21, 2009, the inaugural meeting of the “Maotai Association” was held in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. (Web screenshot)

According to Beijing media reports, on December 21, 2009, the Maotai Culture Research Club (Maotai Club) held its inaugural meeting in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. The then chairman of Guizhou Maotai, Ji Keliang, and general manager Yuan Renguo served as the first chairman and vice chairman of the Maotai Club, respectively.

However, the Hong Kong media “Investigation” magazine revealed that the real operator of the Maotai Association was in fact Li Botan, the son-in-law of then CCP Standing Committee member Jia Qinglin and chairman of Beijing Zhaodu Investment Company. Jia Qinglin is a close associate of former Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin.

The official website of the Maotai Association once listed the members of the second board of directors – Chairman: Yuan Renguo; Vice Chairmen: Liu Zili, Che Feng and Zeng Wei; Vice Chairman and Secretary General: Li Botan.

According to the investigation, Zhongnanhai sources clearly pointed out that Li Botan is the real manipulator of the Maotai Association.

According to Guizhou Maotai’s announcement, Li Botan began serving as an independent director of Guizhou Maotai in December 2014 and resigned in December 2020.

The Wall Street Journal also reported in February that one of the stakeholders behind Jack Ma‘s “Ant” group, Beijing Zhaodu Chairman Li Botan, is best known for helping to establish the Maotai Club in 2009. “The Maotai Club. Hua Ri reports that the Maotai Club is a private club that has been a frequent meeting place for the Communist Party’s princelings in recent years, but that these clubs are anathema to Xi Jinping.

Ma is not only the honorary chairman of the Maotai Club, but also the vice chairman of the first board of directors of the Maotai Club. According to the official website of the Maotai Club, Ma’s top club in Hangzhou, the Jiangnan Club, is actually the Hangzhou branch of one of the five branches of the Maotai Club. The official website of the Maotai Club has now removed all information related to the club.

Che Feng is the son-in-law of Dai Xianglong, the former governor of the Communist Party’s central bank, and the “white glove” of Zeng Qinghong, Liu Yunshan and other senior officials of the Communist Party’s Jiang faction, and has close ties with Xiao Jianhua of the “Tomorrow System” and Ma Jian, the fallen former vice minister of the Ministry of State Security.

According to Investigation magazine, “the root of corruption in the CCP lies at the top, and the corruption of the top Politburo Standing Committee is alarming, as they can easily possess tens of billions of dollars or hundreds of billions of dollars”; to reveal the true nature of the Maotai Club is to see “a party that is completely sick. “.

In the CCP’s tumble of infighting, the Maotai Club and the powerful politicians and businessmen behind it have all ended up in a bad way; the Five Great Clubs have disappeared into obscurity, and its most famous honorary chairman, Jack Ma, is also in danger, as not only has the Ant Group’s listing plan been called off, but his own personal safety is unpredictable.

The second chairman of the board, Yuan Renguo, former chairman of Maotai, has been arrested and prosecuted for corruption in 2019. Liu Zili, vice chairman of the board and former general manager of Maotai, was arrested and prosecuted for corruption in 2019 and sentenced to 11 and a half years in prison in August 2020.

Che Feng, vice chairman of the Maotai Club and son-in-law of former Central Bank Governor Dai Xianglong, was taken away by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection in June 2015 and has not been heard from since.

Li Botan, the de facto director of the Maotai Club and son-in-law of Jia Qinglin, has no exact news at the moment, except that Guizhou Maotai issued an announcement on December 18 last year that it had received a written resignation report from independent director Li Botan. In recent years, a number of Jia Qinglin’s cronies have fallen, and his situation is rumored to be hanging by a thread.