Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (L) meets with Chen Yuan, then president of the China Development Bank, on Sept. 14, 2011.
Hu Huibang, former chairman and party secretary of the Communist Party’s China Development Bank (CDB), was recently sentenced to life in prison for bribery, leading outside media to see this as a signal for Xi Jinping to move in on Chen Yuan, son of Chen Yun. Recently, the U.S. media also disclosed the inside story of Chen Yuan’s entry into the CDB.
According to Baidu’s public information, on March 17, 1994, the Ministry of Finance of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Central Huijin Investment Co. jointly initiated the establishment of CDB as a wholly state-owned policy bank. Yao Zhenyan served as the first president, and Tu Yurei served as secretary of the party group and vice president. CDB has developed into China’s largest bond bank and external investment and financing cooperation bank, as well as the world’s largest development financial institution.
Looking at China, Chen Yuan’s career resume shows that he has served as deputy secretary and secretary of the CPC Beijing Xicheng District Committee, member of the Standing Committee of the Beijing Municipal Committee, head of the Municipal Committee’s Commercial and Foreign Trade Department and deputy director of the Municipal Committee for Physical Reform, deputy governor of the CPC Central Bank from 1988 to 1998, president and party secretary of CDB from 1998 to 2008, chairman and party secretary of CDB from 2008 to April 2013, and then vice chairman of the CPC National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference until his retirement in 2018.
Thus, when CDB was first established, Chen Yuan was still working at the central bank and was not the first president of CDB.
According to an opinion piece published by Radio Free Asia, Chen Yuan has always regarded CDB as a “self-reserve” and one of the reasons he agreed not to serve as chairman of CDB until he was 68 was to wait for then-CCP General Secretary Hu Jintao to fulfill Jiang Zemin’s promise that “at the appropriate time , let Chen Yun’s descendants also enjoy the same treatment as Deng Xiaoping’s descendants by arranging for a vice state level and at least one full ministerial level.”
According to the article, Deng Xiaoping’s eldest son, Deng Pufang, was one year older than Chen Yuan, but he was officially designated by the CCP as a full ministerial-level official later than Chen Yuan. However, Deng was promoted to vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) at the vice state level one term earlier than Chen Yuan. Chen Yuan’s promotion to vice chairman of the CPPCC was preceded by another episode. At the end of the Hu Jintao era, Beijing authorities originally planned to make Chen Yuan the first vice chairman of the CPPCC, who presided over its daily work during the 2013 sessions, once he became a member of the Central Committee, but he was only an alternate member of the Central Committee because he did not receive a high number of votes within the party.
The article also disclosed the reason for Chen Yuan’s willingness to serve as the president of CDB: he could become a full ministerial-level official and lay the foundation for his later promotion to the vice state level. in early 1994, Zhu Rongji, then the first vice premier of the Communist Party of China State Council, single-handedly facilitated the creation of the China Development Bank and asked the Central Organization Department to designate the bank as a full ministerial-level institution, making CDB the only bank at the full ministerial level. As a result, Yao Zhongmin, then vice governor of Henan Province, was transferred to be the first vice president and head of the discipline inspection team of CDB, becoming one of the founding fathers of the bank.
In contrast, the four major banks, Bank of China, Construction Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and Agricultural Bank of China, were the only banks at the vice-ministerial level. It was only after Chen Yuan stopped serving as chairman in 2013 that CDB was downgraded to a vice-ministerial-level bank.
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