A Chinese tycoon who called Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) a clown and criticized his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic was yesterday jailed for 18 years for corruption, bribery and embezzlement of public funds.
Ren Zhiqiang (任志強) — once among the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) inner circle — disappeared from the public eye in March, shortly after penning an essay that lambasted Xi’s pandemic response.
His outspokenness had earned the former chairman of state-owned property developer Huayuan Group the nickname “Big Cannon.”
Yesterday’s verdict said that Ren embezzled almost 50 million yuan (US$7.4 million) of public funds and accepted bribes worth 1.25 million yuan, according to a statement from the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court.
It said that the 69-year-old “voluntarily and truthfully confessed all his crimes,” and would not appeal the court’s decision.
He was also fined 4.2 million yuan.
Rights campaigners have accused Xi and the CCP of using corruption charges to silence dissent.
Beijing has stepped up its crackdown on civil society since Xi took power in 2012, tightening restrictions on freedom of speech, and detaining hundreds of advocates and lawyers.
The verdict said that Ren also “abused his power” in his role at Huayuan Group, which caused more than 116 million yuan of losses to the state-owned holding company and more than 53 million yuan worth of property losses for the group.
The CCP’s disciplinary watchdog launched an investigation into Ren in April, and the trial opened at a Beijing court on Sept. 11 with a handful of supporters outside and a heavy police presence.
‘DARES TO SPEAK’
One supporter told reporters that they backed Ren because he “dares to speak the truth.”
Ren’s essay, from earlier this year, has been scrubbed from China’s Internet — which regularly censors content that challenges the authorities — but was shared online outside China.
“This epidemic has revealed the fact that the party and government officials only care about protecting their own interests, and the monarch only cares about protecting their interests and core position,” Ren wrote, without naming Xi.
“Standing there was not an emperor showing off his new clothes, but a clown stripped of clothes who insisted on being an emperor,” he wrote.
Ren’s influential blog on Sina Weibo attracted millions of followers before his account was closed by authorities in 2016 after he repeatedly called for greater freedom of the press.
Online reaction to Ren’s sentencing was also being rapidly scrubbed yesterday.
“The only real-estate tycoon who dares to tell the truth in China has been censored,” one comment on Weibo read.
“He was born in 1951 and is 69 years old this year ... maybe he won’t live to see the day he gets out of jail,” another said.
The son of a former vice minister of commerce and a CCP member for decades before he was expelled in July, Ren was well-connected with party elites.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in