Last month, the Chinese Communist Navy’s Liaoning aircraft carrier battle group was deployed for the longest exercise in its history. “The Liaoning crossed the Miyako Strait between mainland Japan and the Ryukyu Islands, skirted the eastern waters of Taiwan, and then descended into the South China Sea, near the Spratly Islands, before returning to Qingdao the same way.
However, the exercise made the Chinese Communist Party hold its breath. The Liaoning was not only observed by the U.S. military, but also by Japanese drones that flew into the aircraft carrier’s air defense zone to take pictures.
The most displeasing to the Chinese Communist Party was, of course, the U.S. military, which released pictures of its feet crossed to watch, and a U.S. soldier issued a video of the Liaoning carrier aircraft taking off. The Chinese Foreign Ministry later issued a statement protesting the U.S. military’s close observation and demanding that the U.S. “restrain its front-line troops. This is in addition to the fact that the Liaoning was also stalled in the same area of the sea for three days near Hainan Island, which is very unusual for an aircraft carrier to be practicing in combat. Some sources say that this is because the Liaoning’s engine has a problem. Of course, it is not clear what is going on.
But soon, Song Xue, the deputy chief of staff of the Chinese Communist Navy, fell from the horse, officially saying that he “seriously violated discipline and law”. Therefore, some analysts say that Song Xue’s fall indicates that the highest level in Beijing is extremely dissatisfied with the performance of the Liaoning, and that Song Xue is unlucky to be pursued.
What exactly is the relationship between Song Xue and the Liaoning? This must be said from the past life of the Liaoning. The Liaoning was originally built by the Soviet Navy as the Kuznetsov Marshal-class aircraft carrier No. 2, originally named the Riga, launched on November 25, 1988, and renamed the Varyag in July 1990. The entire carrier was shelved after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Marshal Kuznetsov was the commander of the Soviet Navy during World War II. In 1997, Ukraine dismantled the engines and prepared to sell the Varyag as scrap metal.
On March 19, 1998, Xu Zengping, a former member of the Chinese Communist Party and a veteran of the Communist Party’s Guangzhou Military Sports Brigade who had emigrated to Hong Kong, came forward in the name of Hong Kong’s Chuang-Lu Group and announced that he planned to build it into a maritime casino in Macau, and after a decision was made, he offered the Varyag and its complete set of design drawings at auction for $20 million, and then The first 10% payment of US$2 million was made. Subsequently by the China Securities Corporation, the military background of the Eastern Huizhong company, the state-owned CSIC group of companies involved, invested a large amount of money and in charge of the operation of the Macau Chong Law Company.
The Soviet Union was a continental country and lacked good ports, so even at the height of the Soviet Union’s power during the Cold War, the Soviet Navy did not pose any threat to the West. One reason was that the Soviet Union did not have good seaports, several naval bases, one in St. Petersburg, caught in the dead end of the Baltic Sea, one in the Black Sea, the place where the Nikolaev shipyard produced the Varyag, and one far away in Vladivostok, too far from the core of the Soviet Union.
“The Varyag was built by the Ukrainian Nikolaev shipyard.
In June 2000, the aircraft carrier Varyag left the Black Sea shipyard, but from the Black Sea, it had to pass through the Bosphorus and the Danial Strait to enter the Mediterranean Sea, both of which are controlled by Turkey, which is the only way to enter the Mediterranean Sea. Turkey is a member of NATO, and as soon as the Americans were active, Turkey, of course, began to obstruct, and the carrier was stranded on the Turkish shore of the Black Sea until November 2001. Stranded for 16 months, it cost $8,500 a day to maintain and also had to pay $17,000 a month to the Ukrainian port authority. You can do the math for yourself to see how much it cost.
Later, Turkey asked the Chinese to buy $1 billion in insurance to guarantee that the behemoth would not have an accident in the strait. By the time it got out of the Mediterranean, the ship also ran into a storm and ran aground, with a dead crew member in the middle. So it took until March 2002 for the aircraft carrier, which was sold to China as scrap steel, to be towed to Dalian, China. In August 2004, the government of the People’s Republic of China paid RMB 878 million to Chuang-Lu to officially acquire ownership of the hull section. The ship was then studied, renewed and rebuilt by CSIC Dalian Shipyard from 2005 onwards.
Xu Zengping, the owner of Hong Kong-based Genro Law, however, complained a lot because he did not get the money. And what is the reason for this? Xu Zengping, a former member of the Chinese Communist Party, retired from the Guangzhou Military District in 1983, made money from his business and moved to Hong Kong in 1988. At that time, there was only one way for mainlanders to move to Hong Kong, and that was to get what is commonly known as a one-way permit. In the mid-1980s, the price was about 400,000 to 500,000 RMB, and in the 1990s it rose to one or two million. Xu Zengping saw the news about the sale of ships in Ukraine and started to move around. He approached the Chinese Communist military, mainly the Naval Equipment Department, and offered to buy the aircraft carrier in his personal name, which would then be bought and converted by the state. But he didn’t have that much money and found a Chinese financial company, Huaxia Securities.
The chairman and general manager of Huaxia Securities was named Shao Chun, and he began to be very supportive of Xu Zengping’s approach. Xu Zengping said it was a classified operation operated by an individual act of state, and to be on the safe side, Shao Chun asked to see the documents, but Xu Zengping refused. Of course, the country’s top military confidential documents, how can give a company owner to see, that is, state-owned enterprises can not ah. So the money borrowed into a deadlock. Finally Xu Zengping said, can not see the documents, I let you see the leaders. So in Beijing, Xu Zengping took Shao Chun, met with the big leader. This leader was He Pengfei, the vice commander of the Navy at that time, who was in charge of the Chinese Communist Navy equipment.
You may think that this is far from the truth, and what is the relationship with Song Xue. Song Xue, who was He Pengfei’s secretary, was also He Pengfei’s right-hand man.
According to Shao Chun, “He Pengfei said, first, this ship is available. Second, this ship was wanted by the Navy.” Shao Chun also said, why the Navy can not directly come forward, why the country can not get money now, he did not say in detail, “but then I understand the meaning of this.” Chun Shao said he paid for the ship and bought it back. “Since it’s the state’s business, I’ll pay for it.”
At the time, He Pengfei said the aircraft carrier thing “was the only chance for the Chinese nation.” Shao Chun said He Pengfei had tears in his eyes when he said this, saying, “This is something that no one will ever sell us before, and there will never be one in the future.”
But in reality, the deal was not agreed to by Beijing. The Central Military Commission’s military aid trade office, which had called in a report to the highest level, asked for a project. However, the project was not approved because the top brass “thought not unified. Shao Chun said he contributed money, but was investigated by then Premier Zhu Rongji. Zhu Rongji said, a securities company, buy what aircraft carrier, certainly personal benefit. Zhu Rongji wrote an instruction with a stroke of his pen: “Audacious, serious investigation and punishment, to respect the state law, as a warning to others.
Of course, the case finally ended, because it did not take long for Zhu Rongji to step down. Xu Zengping borrowed money from Shao Chun, with the equity of Macau Chuanglu as collateral, and finally Huaxia and China Shipbuilding Corporation took 80% of the equity, Xu Zengping himself still has 20%, the Chinese Communist Party paid Chuanglu more than 800 million, Xu himself took 130 million. However, he said everywhere that he traveled around to buy the carrier, spent a lot of money and lost a lot of money. In the end, no one knows, but Shao Chun they quickly filed Macau Genro Law into bankruptcy, so that in the future the United States, Ukraine can not be pursued, the central government can not be pursued.
But He Pengfei’s fate was not good either. He Pengfei was the son of He Long, one of the top ten marshals of the Communist Party, and had been in charge of the equipment of the Communist Party’s military, and was originally the head of the General Logistics Department. In the 1980s, there were several major arms companies, all of which were state-owned and controlled by the military, including North China, Great Wall, and Poly, among others. The Poly company sold arms very well, and even sold to the United States. Of course, the weapons sold to the United States were Red Star pistols and AK47s.
Last December when I went to Atlanta, Professor Xie Tian from the University of South Carolina dragged me to shoot a gun and took out an AK47 with a particularly loud sound. That gun was the one he bought at a show in the late 80s, made in China, and I think it was Poly that sold it to the US.
However, the sale of Chinese weapons to the U.S. can be a big deal, especially when it comes to political enemies. 2001, Poly and the North in the United States of a batch of naval ordnance, the Central Military Commission’s Military Discipline Inspection Commission to monitor the six rooms, reported to the Central Military Commission, said that there are big economic problems in the middle of this batch of ordnance. In fact, Poly did business with the Americans, and the General Staff as well as the General Armament Department knew about it, but one of Poly’s deputy general managers was detained by the Military Discipline Commission. At that time, Jiang Zemin was still the chairman of the military commission, and the army was full of its own people’s business inside, which usually would not be told to him. However, at that time, the Navy Political Commissar Yang Huaqing and He Pengfei relationship is not good, Yang Huaqing told this to Jiang Zemin, Jiang sent word to track down the end. The navy then set up a task force. At that time, He Pengfei was hospitalized because of heart disease, and after learning this news, he died, and on March 27, 2001, He Pengfei died. He died on March 27, 2001, exactly one year after the arrival of the Varyag, later known as the Liaoning, in China.
In his obituary, the Xinhua News Agency added that He Pengfei was the commander of the navy and was “in charge of equipment construction”. He implemented the “8th Five-Year” development plan for naval equipment construction, formulated the “9th Five-Year” and “15th Five-Year” development plans and development plans until 2010, “sketched out the blueprint for the leapfrog development of naval equipment “He contributed to the rapid development of the navy and the continuous improvement of the level of combat power. He Pengfei was also in charge of the Naval Aviation, and since entering the 1990s, “organized the troops to complete foreign affairs tasks such as foreign friendly relations, equipment and technology introduction, academic and technical exchanges, multilateral military diplomacy, and maritime military security negotiations.”
Far from it again.
“The Varyag was officially transformed into the Liaoning ship in 2004, with the number 001, and the CCP then invested more than 20 billion RMB in refurbishing, retrofitting, testing, etc.
Although He Pengfei has passed away, his power in the CCP military, especially in the equipment sector, still exists. Song Xue, who was He Pengfei’s secretary in the General Equipment Department, took him with him when he went to the Navy. “Song Xue was deeply involved in the subsequent equipment of the Liaoning, including the equipment of the aircraft carrier itself and the equipment of the carrier aircraft.
We all know about the corruption in the CCP military, but the real tigers in the CCP military are in the logistics and equipment departments. This group of people involved in the amount of money, casually have a billion or 800 million, than the military vice chairman of those tens of millions or a couple of hundred million more powerful. Gu Junshan, the former Minister of the General Equipment Department, Vice Minister of the General Logistics Department, the most famous. The Navy is also very powerful, the South China Sea Fleet Equipment Department Minister Rear Admiral Jiang Zhonghua, jumped to his death, the Navy’s deputy political commissar, Lieutenant General Ma Zhongxiang, also jumped to his death, both involved in corruption, are involved in equipment.
A friend said that those senior officers in the former Logistics Department, especially the General Equipment Department, twenty out of ten were corrupt officials, meaning that their wives and children were included. The two of them were involved in corruption.
Song Xue was from the General Armament Department and was in charge of the Liaoning’s equipment during that time. This is a high-risk industry, and even if there is no corruption, there is inevitably a lot of involvement with others.
Now that the Liaoning has made a fool of itself in the international arena, Beijing’s top brass is furious and wants to pursue the matter. There are definitely more fishy things in it than the Beiyang Marine Division.
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