Recently, China’s second-generation billionaires have started keeping a low profile instead of showing off their wealth in a high-profile manner.
After Chinese Communist Party authorities began targeting billionaires such as Jack Ma in the past few years, China’s second generation has learned that it is best to keep a low profile to avoid getting into trouble, the Apple Daily reported on Nov. 11.
Tu Haoran, 32, founder of Beijing-based Fantasy Culture Communications Co., was quoted as saying in an interview with Bloomberg, “When we saw our friends’ families arrested and put in jail, we learned how to behave. Since 2006, I’ve been around too many examples. Now everyone knows to keep a low profile. You don’t need the world to know you have money. What’s the point of acting in a high profile like that?”
According to Tu, it seems safest to have some wealth, but not to be super rich, because “big trees attract wind.
The son of a billionaire surnamed Wang in the Shanghai media industry confessed that his father wanted him to keep a low profile. The father and son are also very careful not to expose their relationship online. He also revealed that his father gives him a “limited” allowance and does not allow him to use credit cards to prevent him from spending money in a way that would attract attention.
In recent years, a number of Chinese private business tycoons have been in trouble one after another. Xiao Jianhua and Wu Xiaohui have been jailed, Ye Jianming has evaporated, and their companies, including Tomorrow’s System, Anbang Group, and Huaxin Energy, have been “taken over” by the authorities; Wang Jianlin of Wanda Group has been restricted from leaving the country and forced to sell his assets; Wang Jian of HNA Group died in an accident during an official visit to France, and rumors of his murder continue to swirl; Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba announced his retirement, and his Ant Group was suddenly called off on the eve of its IPO and its stock plunged; Ma Huateng no longer served as the legal representative of Tencent Credit; Lenovo founder Liu Chuanzhi stepped down as the legal person of his company, etc.
This series of events has led the outside world to question whether the Chinese Communist Party has started a new round of “pig killing” of private enterprises. And many recent signs seem to further confirm this suspicion.
In September this year, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee issued a document on strengthening the united front work for the private economy, requiring governments at all levels to maintain a high degree of consistency with the CPC Central Committee, including private entrepreneurs in Hong Kong and Macau, and to always be “politically clear”, so that private enterprises “unswervingly listen to the Party and follow the Party”.
On October 29, the Fifth Plenary Session of the Communist Party of China (CPC) concluded, and there was no mention of the “private economy” in the announcement it made. U.S.-based economist Su Xiaohe said this has never been seen in the past 40 years, and he could imagine what the CPC would do next.
Su Xiaohe said that the Chinese Communist Party will definitely suppress the private economy next, and will definitely find a way to make the private economy disappear, so that all the private economy will return to the state-owned economic system, which is, frankly speaking, a new round of public-private partnership, but this time the Chinese Communist Party has changed a new word, called what “mixed ownership”. Think about it, what does “mixed ownership” mean? A private enterprise operating together with a state-owned enterprise in the Communist Party will end up being annexed by the state-owned enterprise, which is frankly a money grab, right? Essentially, it is the original public-private partnership.
Yuan Jianbin, a private entrepreneur who was persecuted and imprisoned by the Chinese Communist Party and now lives in the United States, expressed similar views to our reporter. He said that the official government advocates the participation of state-owned enterprises in private enterprises, under the pretense that the capital and advantages of state-owned enterprises will be superimposed on private enterprises, but the Chinese business community generally fears that the “public-private partnership” reform of the 1950s will be revived.
Su Xiaohe predicts that in the near future, the Chinese Communist Party will turn all private enterprises into “mixed ownership” and all private enterprises will become branches of publicly owned enterprises. Therefore, it is better for private entrepreneurs to transfer their money out of China, leave China and their families, and end their business in China, otherwise, they will repeat the same mistake as the Chinese capitalists and entrepreneurs who were under public-private partnership.
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