The blocking of former Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s article commemorating his mother was analyzed by senior editors of the Japanese media, who believe that the incident involves a big game of Xi Jinping’s game, that is, Xi is digging out and fixing the people behind financial institutions such as Alibaba, and the blocking of Wen Jiabao is Xi Jinping’s warning to him.
On the eve of this year’s Qingming Festival, Wen Jiabao was blocked by the entire Communist Party after he published an article in a little-known local newspaper, the Macau Herald, in memory of his deceased mother.
Katsuji Nakazawa, a senior editor at the Nikkei Shimbun, reported on April 29 that the general view is that Wen Jiabao is a so-called “reformist” within the Chinese Communist Party system, and that his article amounts to an indirect criticism of Xi Jinping.
In his article, Wen criticizes the Cultural Revolution, a different position than Xi Jinping, who is making a somewhat positive assessment of the Cultural Revolution. Wen’s article talks about the persecution of his parents during the Cultural Revolution, all of which is objectively true and does not go beyond the CCP’s definition of the Cultural Revolution; in the words of one source, “it does not cross the line.
Katsuji Nakazawa analyzes that the above is not the main reason why Xi Jinping blocked Wen Jiabao. The real reason is that in the run-up to the 20th Communist Party Congress in 2022, mainland China is now entering a period of extreme political sensitivity, and Xi Jinping is “warning Wen Jiabao and his relatives to remain silent and not to take any action while vigorously regulating the financial sector.”
He analyzed that Xi is cracking down on the family forces behind Alibaba, including Chen Yun and Jiang Zemin. Jiang Zemin’s grandson Jiang Zhicheng, Wen Jiabao’s son Wen Yunsong and Chen Yuan, son of former Politburo Standing Committee member Chen Yun, were shareholders in Alibaba Group when it went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014, according to the New York Times.
Overnight demolition of pagoda and Huabiao
How did Xi Jinping crack down on Chen Yuan’s faction of forces? According to Nakazawa’s analysis, on April 19, the Chinese Communist Party announced an investigation into Zhang Maolong, the former director of operations at China Development Bank, saying he was “suspected of seriously violating Party discipline laws.
Zhang Maolong was the former president and chairman of China Development Bank (CDB), Chen Yuan’s first butler. He transferred to CDB in 2002 and served as deputy director of the personnel bureau, director of the general office, director of the organ service bureau, and director of operations. Another of Chen Yuan’s big butlers, Zhang Linwu, who served as the director of the Development Bank’s General Office (Party Committee Office) in 2012, also fell in January this year.
The Development Bank reports directly to the State Council and is the key organization responsible for policy financing. Xi’s investigation of Chen’s forces is seen as a warning to the Red II generation.
During Chen Yuan’s tenure at the Development Bank, a huge, ornate Chinese pagoda was built outside the bank’s headquarters, and on Feb. 27, 2016, Xi ordered the pagoda to be demolished overnight, which was seen as a sign of Xi’s distrust of Chen.
Some said the pagoda was a building used to showcase virtue, loyalty, filial piety and righteousness, while others said the pagoda was carved with nine dragons.
On August 5, 2016, the “Nine Dragons Huabiao” in the middle of Dalian Xinghai Square was also demolished overnight. It was a project undertaken by Bo Xilai to establish his personal achievements: the Chinese watch was carved with nine dragons, and since the Chinese watch and the golden dragon are symbols of the emperor, the Chinese watch was considered a symbol of Bo Xilai’s ambition to “claim the throne”.
The Chinese watch standing in Dalian’s Xinghai Square, which Bo Xilai wanted to use to suppress the “dragon vein” of the Chinese watch in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, was dismantled by Xi on August 5, 2016.
The removal of the Development Bank’s pagoda and Dalian’s “Nine Dragons Huabiao” heralded the full dawn of the Xi Jinping era. At the 2017 Communist Party meeting, Xi Jinping enshrined his “thoughts” in the party constitution.
Xi Jinping Orders Removal of Reports on Jiang Zemin
Xi Jinping is also gradually cutting out Jiang Zemin’s faction. Alibaba has always had the shadow of Jiang Zeng’s group behind it. Jiang Zemin’s grandson Jiang Zhicheng’s “Boyu Capital”, which was one of Alibaba’s shareholders, immediately moved part of its business from Hong Kong to Singapore after hearing about it, and the Chinese Communist Party’s power struggle began to involve a bigger fight for control of money and property.
In 2015, several mainland Chinese portals cited Hainan’s Dongshanling WeChat public website as reporting that three generations of former CCP leader Jiang Zemin’s family had recently traveled to Hainan’s Dongshanling, but the reports were subsequently deleted in their entirety.
Seeing Jiang’s disturbing actions, Xi’s government immediately ordered all articles and photos related to Jiang to be removed from the Internet, Nakazawa said.
Sympathy for Wen Jiabao?
So what does Xi Jinping’s treatment of Wen say about him? According to Katsuji Nakazawa, Xi Jinping appears to be sympathetic to Wen Jiabao in some ways.
In 2012, the New York Times reported that Wen’s family controlled property worth at least $2.7 billion, and in 2014, Wen published a private letter in a Hong Kong newspaper stating that he had never used his power for personal gain.
A source close to the top of the Communist Party revealed that Wen had written five times to the top of the Communist Party asking for an independent investigation into rumors of corruption in his family. Previously, he made such a request several times at the CCP’s Politburo meeting and said that if he had committed any corruption, he was willing to resign immediately and accept the Party discipline and state law.
According to Nakazawa’s analysis, Wen Jiabao’s tribute to his mother may be an attempt to restore his image, which was damaged by his political opponents, in the hope that he will go down in history as a “positive image”.
He believes that with only a year and a half left before the 20th Communist Party Congress in 2020, Xi will not tolerate the circulation of Wen’s words on the mainland because it would set a precedent for comments by “retired veteran leaders” and would hinder Xi’s plans to take full control of the economic and financial sectors, as well as the country’s political agenda.
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