September 4, 2012
The Ferrari Scandal
Another day, another scandal. The timing of this one is particularly disconcerting for the CCP, coming a few weeks before they are expected to hold the 18th Party Congress with a changing of the guard that takes place every ten years. This is an odd one with more questions than answers. Did the son of one of China’s highest-ranking officials really die when the Ferrari he was driving crashed into a wall in March 2011? What happened to the two female passengers who were reported to be in the car with him? Was his father demoted because of the embarrassing incident or were there other reasons? And then there’s the biggest question of them all: what was the son of a party official earning about $15,000 a year doing driving a half-million dollar car?
A fresh scandal has hit China’s leadership ahead of this autumn’s once-a-decade transition of power, with reports that a close ally of president Hu Jintao has been blocked for promotion or even demoted following his son’s involvement in a fatal Ferrari crash.
Photos of the horrific smash in Beijing were deleted within hours of appearing on microblogs and websites in March. Even searches for the word “Ferrari” were blocked on the popular Sina Weibo microblog – prompting widespread speculation that a senior leader’s child was involved.
Now unnamed sources have identified the driver of the black sports car as the son of Ling Jihua, who was removed as head of the party’s general office of the central committee this weekend, the South China Morning Post and Reuters reported.
Another article raises question about whether there even was a fatal crash:
Sources quoted by Reuters said at least one of the trio died but that the victims’ identities were unclear; one said the young man had survived….One of Ling’s room-mates at Peking University, from where he graduated with a degree in International Politics in 2011, said he had not been able to contact his friend since the crash.
“We have all been trying to get in touch with him since we heard about the car accident,” he said. “He was supposed to go to graduate school, but he has not been seen since the crash. The last time I saw him was in July 2011.”
“I really cannot tell what happened. But all of his friends said it happened, so I guess it must have,” he added.
While some reports say searches on Weibo for “Ferrari” are blocked, I saw some tweets from China this morning saying it’s not true. Needless to say, any mention of the story by the media has long been banned. The timing couldn’t be worse for the CCP, already beleaguered by the Bo Xilai-Neil Heywood scandals. The People’s Congress is all about harmony and unity, and that threatens to be overshadowed by an atmosphere of suspicion and outrage over the blatant corruption of the Party.The CCP is in a real bind, seeking to get out its message of harmony while people are seething over its lawlessness.
On a related note, I saw an opinion piece nearly a week ago that I think ties into the story above. It’s by perennial China critic Minxin Pei, who insists the bulk of the Chinese people are disgusted with their government while the overseas executives doing business there are utterly charmed.
One of the most glaring, if unremarked, oddities concerning China nowadays is how perceptions of its leaders diverge depending on the observer. In the eyes of the Chinese public, government officials are venal, incompetent, and interested solely in getting lucrative appointments. But Western executives invariably describe Chinese officials as smart, decisive, knowledgeable, and far-sighted – roughly the same adjectives that they once used to describe Bo Xilai, the disgraced Communist Party boss of Chongqing, before he was purged.
It is impossible to reconcile these views. Either the Chinese public is impossible to please, or Western executives are hopelessly wrong. But, given that daily experience places Chinese citizens in an infinitely better position than Western executives to evaluate Chinese officials and their conduct, one would have to conclude that they are almost certainly right. And that means that Westerners who have spent considerable time in China and consider themselves seasoned “China hands” need to ask why they have gotten it so wrong.
One obvious explanation is that Chinese officials are extremely good at seducing Western businessmen with friendly gestures and generous promises. The same officials who lord it over ordinary Chinese people often summon irresistible charm to woo Western investors.
You have to consider the source; I’m not sure how he measures most Chinese people’s attitudes toward the CCP. We need to remember that a 2009 Pew Research poll showed most Chinese are happy about the direction the government is taking the country, so who knows? From my own experience, which counts for little, I find the Chinese public’s attitude toward the government ambiguous at best: Yes, they’re slimy and corrupt and we have huge issues with them, but we can’t imagine China with any other kind of leadership. Meanwhile, these damaging scandals are not helping the party image, and one has to wonder if/when the Chinese say enough is enough. I remain pessimistic they will say this anytime soon. There is simply no alternative.
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Richard Burger is the author of Behind the Red Door: Sex in China, an exploration of China's sexual revolution and its clash with traditional Chinese values.
1
By t_co
The fact that someone’s son dying in a questionable way is enough to lose a Standing Committee appointment suggests one of two things:
1) The people drawing this conclusion are reading way too much into the connection theories here; the popularity of Ling Jihua in the Central Committee is a fabrication
OR
2) Politics at the top of China is so divided, tense, and evenly balanced that even storms in a teacup, like this tragic accident, are enough to scupper careers like LJH’s.
The reason I say this is because LJH is not touching any of the lucrative positions of the Chinese construction-development state–the banks, the SOEs, real estate. Indeed the only way he could make money off his office would be abusing his role as a gatekeeper to Hu Jintao and senior officials–a hugely dangerous game as that would mean he would be stepping on the toes of pretty much all the CCP brass. (I can’t imagine for the life of me someone as rules-bound (守规矩) as Hu Jintao would ever let his aide take cash for being a personal gatekeeper.)
September 4, 2012 @ 8:43 am | Comment
2
By Other Richard
I think Pei is right to an extent: there is a strain in the West that buys into a certain mythology about the Chinese leadership, i.e.: the country is run by nine enlightened engineers who act as benevolent, Confucian authoritarian, and the next wave of leadership will be more Westernized in their worldview. The Tom Friedmans of the world are especially guilty here. I think Pei would do better to target that crowd with his criticism.
Pei’s assertion that “Western executives” have a positive impression of Chinese officials seems a bit wrongheaded. Any business person operating in China, where government relations can make or break an enterprise, is going to be extremely careful to publicly praise, or at least not openly criticize, the Chinese government. What these same “Western executives” say behind closed doors is often another story. I know of very few business people, Western or otherwise, who have had substantive dealings with Chinese officialdom/bureaucracy and have come away overly impressed.
September 4, 2012 @ 9:00 am | Comment
3
By Richard
OR, totally agree about Western businessmen forced to smile and kiss the ring of government, making grandiose statements of how supportive the government is blah blah blah. I used to write their press releases. I don’t know how Pei researched this opinion piece, if he did at all.
t_co: even storms in a teacup, like this tragic accident
This is hardly a storm in a teacup. This is a story of gross corruption at the highest level of government, even if you ardently believe Hu would never allow someone so high up to loot the goody bag. The fact is his son was driving a $718,000 Ferrari. That reeks. There is criminality here, and the fact it’s so high up makes this no storm in a teacup. This is a major scandal, and I don’t know how you can see it any other way.
September 4, 2012 @ 9:11 am | Comment
4
By HongXing
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lKwkn6JT74
September 4, 2012 @ 10:23 am | Comment
5
By Richard
Red Star, my dear friend, you really do add a whole new dimension to the concept of teh stoopid. This incident is not about people having accidents with Ferraris. It’s about high-level corruption, censorship, the People’s Congress and the Chinese people’s disgust with their leaders. The astonishing fact that you would put up a link to an accident involving a Ferrari in the US as if there were some sort of equivalence — well, suffice it to say that this is simply you being Hong Xing, as usual, as you have been for some five or six years now. At least you are remarkably consistent.
September 4, 2012 @ 11:30 am | Comment
6
By narsfweasels
Oh, come now Richard! We all know that a Ferrari accident in the US is approximately equal to a million Ferrari accidents in China! It should be painfully clear that the crash in the USa was caused by a legacy of Imperialism, warmongering and disrespect for other countries’ sovereignty!
Whereas the Ferrari crash in China was caused by the driver suddenly remembering the Century of Humiliation, the Opium Wars and all those unequal treaties. We’ll never know the truth, but it’s perfectly possible that the driver was prescient and foresaw China’s unfair treatment at the Olympics in 2012 and suddenly lost control in anguish.
September 4, 2012 @ 12:02 pm | Comment
7
By Handler
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9365099/Chinas-incoming-president-Xi-Jinpings-family-has-wealth-of-hundreds-of-millions.html
Wouldn’t that be a riot if it was Xi Jinping and not Hu Jintao who was forced to enact Spartan sumptuary laws. Comrades, you already borrowed the diarchy. Why not reach for the whole hog? If less is more just think how much more more would be.
@HongXing
That’ll learn’em, HongXing. That’ll learn’em.
September 4, 2012 @ 12:17 pm | Comment
8
By S.K. Cheung
I agree with Other Richard. On the record, obviously “western executives” need to publicly kiss ass if their companies plan to do any business in China. If anything, it merely adds to the impression that China officialdom is but one big cesspool, such that even legitimate public criticism of Chinese officials by western execs is more than enough to kiss deals goodbye. It’s all about the face, baby. All about the face.
Red Star is really quite adorable. I mean, it takes quite an intellect to derive from the Ferrari scandal that the key point in question is merely crashing Ferraris. It’s to the point where I go ‘wow, I don’t think it’s humanly possible for someone to think that’ only to have red star surprise me again and again.
September 4, 2012 @ 12:44 pm | Comment
9
By nulle
let’s the brainwashing begin…
badcanto.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/hong-kong-national-education-personal-patriotic-record/
badcanto.wordpress.com/2012/09/04/hong-kong-propaganda-tv-london-and-washington-behind-anti-national-education-protest/
September 4, 2012 @ 3:36 pm | Comment
10
By Xilin
The whole thing with Ling Jihua just shows how nobody understands the inner-workings of the Chinese leadership.
Nobody knows exactly what will happen in the transition later on in the year.
Nobody knows for certain what the policies of the next leadership will be.
Those who do speculate as to what is going to happen do so based on their own ideologies, agenda and interests.
September 4, 2012 @ 3:41 pm | Comment
11
By slim
Far lower-level officials are sending their kids abroad for expensive study and opulent lifestyles. A friend involved in helping Chinese students adjust to life in Britain sees the offspring of mid-tier city quzhang or small-town cops buying BMWs and living in high-end apartments. No word on if they actually study.
September 4, 2012 @ 3:54 pm | Comment
12
By FOARP
@Slim – That’s why London Metropolitan had it’s international status revoked – they didn’t bother to confirm whether international students were actually going to class.
September 4, 2012 @ 8:16 pm | Comment
13
By S. K. Cheung
To slim,
I guess there are a bunch of Bo melon melons running around. Sure would be interested to know how these officials can afford to send the little princes and princesses abroad.
September 5, 2012 @ 8:42 am | Comment
14
By King Tubby
The century of shame is a nice thought, but it was alcohol, “My dad is a fixer for Big Specs Hu” and the close proximity of hot willing female flesh.
By the way, a great photo of the wreck here.
w