On this episode of China Uncensored,
we meet Chinese billionaire, Xiao Jianhua.
So rich, he practically lives at the Four Seasons hotel
in Hong Kong.
But his luxury lifestyle won’t last.
Stay tuned for Lifestyles of the Rich and Corrupt.
Hi, welcome to China Uncensored,
I’m your host Chris Chappell.
Meet Chinese mega tycoon Xiao Jianhua.
He may not look it,
but he’s one of China’s richest men.
He has his own entourage of female bodyguards
who will “even wipe the sweat from his brow.”
But don’t let his casual style fool you.
Even though he dresses like someone
out of a Wes Anderson film,
he’s worth an estimated 5.8 billion dollars.
And he’ll need every penny
for when the fashion police come to get him.
Speculation on what’s happened to Xiao has been mounting
since last week
when some reports came out suggesting that he’d been
abducted by agents of Beijing
and taken to mainland China.
Whoa, China’s fashion police
are really overstepping here.
I mean,
they let Chinese billionaire Chen Guangbiao
get away with absolute murder.
Wait, what’s that, Shelley?
Oh, it wasn’t the fashion police who abducted Xiao.
It was the regular police.
Xiao was staying long-term at the Four Seasons hotel in Hong Kong
when Chinese plainclothes police allegedly abducted him
and took him across the border into mainland China.
And his female bodyguards didn’t even stop them.
A lot of people are freaking out,
because if this was indeed an abduction
by Chinese police in Hong Kong,
it would be a huge violation of the One Country, Two Systems policy.
That’s the policy that keeps Hong Kong free and independent
of the Communist Party’s rule.
In theory, if not always in practice.
But “abduction” is such a nasty word.
Recently a source inside Zhongnanhai,
the Beijing leadership headquarters,
with authoritative information on high-level discussions,
told The Epoch Times that Xiao Jianhua is
“currently assisting the top Chinese leadership
with corruption investigations in Beijing.”
Haha, “assisting,” oh my gosh...this thing just writes itself.
According to the source,
Xiao Jianhua has become yet another pawn in Xi Jinping’s campaign
against political rival and toadmaster, Jiang Zemin.
Sorry, this Jiang Zemin.
So what happened?
“This is one of China’s richest men—
a tycoon that has business interests and investment interests
spread through many different areas of the financial circles,
and reported links to some of the richest and most powerful families
in China.”
Now if you’re wondering what that has to do
with his mysterious disappearance,
well, Xiao Jianhua is the perfect example
of how business and politics are so closely entwined
in China.
You see,
Xiao’s a smart guy.
He was accepted to Beijing’s prestigious Peking University
when he was only 14.
He’s also smart because he can read the political winds.
While many of his classmates were protesting and dying
in Tiananmen Square,
Xiao stayed loyal to the Communist Party.
Then he made his fortune
by helping China’s elite make their fortunes.
You see many of China’s biggest state
and publicly owned business a
re actually in the hands of the top Chinese leaders’
family members.
That’s the glorious way communism
with Chinese characteristics works.
Under communism,
they forcibly took over all private enterprise,
so everything was owned by the state.
And then when the state decided to try out capitalism,
they made some of those state businesses
“publicly owned,”
which in many cases meant owned by family members
of public officials.
Of course, this doesn’t look so good.
So smart guys like Xiao Jianhua help Chinese officials
cover their tracks.
And when it comes to covering tracks,
Xiao seems to play the field.
He has ties to Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
For example,
“In 2012, a company owned by Xiao bought shares
worth at least $2.4 million from
the sister and brother-in-law of Xi Jinping.”
He also has ties with Xi Jinping’s rivals.
In 2006, he helped the family of this guy,
Zeng Qinghong.
And Zeng Qinghong was the right hand man
of former Chinese leader, Ziang Zemin.
This is my left hand. You get the idea.
Don’t they look happy together?
That photo was taken in the good old days,
before they were engaged in a life-or-death factional power struggle
against Xi Jinping.
But anyway,
back in 2006, billionaire Xiao Jianhua helped Zeng Qinghong’s son
get control of a state power company
in Shandong province that was about to go public.
Using a series of shell corporations,
Xiao helped Zeng’s son get the power company
for pennies on the dollar,
making him rich.
It was a good deal for everyone,
except Chinese taxpayers
who effectively footed the bill.
That power company thing briefly became a big scandal
when financial newspaper Caijing published it as their cover story.
It “was the only one Caijing ran
that was ever pulped by censors.”
News censored, scandal gone, problem solved.
It least it would have been,
if it weren’t for that meddling Internet!
Now, that story is floating around again
on Chinese social media.
But strangely enough,
this time it’s being left uncensored.
Hmm…
So has Xiao Jianhua
really been helping corrupt officials?
Well, according to the The Epoch Times’ source,
“Xiao Jianhua is the most important ‘money launderer’
of the Jiang [Zemin] faction.”
A lot of money laundering goes on in Hong Kong.
It’s the place some corrupt Chinese officials
use to funnel their ill gotten gains from mainland China
out into the West.
Take Xiao himself for example.
I said earlier he was worth about 5.8 billion dollars.
That number comes from the Hurun report,
which ranks China’s richest people.
But the Hurun chairman told Financial Times that
“it is extremely difficult to work out his wealth because
‘he’s a got a myriad of highly complex structures.’”
Structures even more complex
than Lady Gaga’s Super Bowl performance.
And if what Epoch Times’ source says is accurate,
Xiao may have helped the Jiang faction
empty out China’s coffers.
If Xiao Jianhua is a money launderer,
he would have dirt on a lot of people.
So the information Xiao has could be a big boon
to Chinese leader Xi Jinping
in his fight against Jiang Zemin.
Because, as always, there’s a political power struggle going on.
So it’s quite possible that Xi Jinping
is using Xiao Jianhua as a tool in his anti-corruption campaign—
a campaign designed mainly
to take down his political enemies.
“That’s why the Xi Jinping administration
has decided to arrest Xiao Jianhua,
investigate him,
and use his case to make a breakthrough in cleaning out
the many godfathers in China’s financial sector,”
the Epoch Times’ source said.
If that’s true,
it’s a bold move by Xi Jinping.
Abducting someone from Hong Kong
would violate Hong Kong law.
Especially because Xiao isn’t even a Chinese citizen.
He was born in China,
but he's a Canadian citizen now.
He also holds a diplomatic passport
from Antigua and Barbuda—
which is incidentally is also a great place
for laundering money.
Of course, you never know.
Maybe Xiao just went to Beijing to
voluntarily assist with corruption investigations.
So what do you think of the disappearance
of Chinese billionaire Xiao Jianhua?
Leave your comments below,
but then cover them up.
Thanks for watching this episode of China Uncensored.
Once again, I’m your host Chris Chappell.
See you next time.