On March 11, 2007, Xi Jinping, then the top Communist Party official in Zhejiang province, near Shanghai, had dinner with the U.S. ambassador to China. The meal was part of the embassy’s outreach to up-and-coming Chinese officials. Xi, 53, was reputed to be among three officials in the running to replace Hu Jintao, China’s dour-faced leader.
Ambassador Clark T. “Sandy” Randt, a classmate of President George W. Bush, was impressed with Xi. In a cable recounting the dinner, Randt described the discussion as “frank and friendly.” Xi, as he always did with Americans, had lauded Hollywood movies and, fittingly for the party boss from a province that was a hotbed of entrepreneurial energy, praised a new law that would protect private investors in China. Xi came off as a self-confident rising star, and a supporter of private business.
More than a decade later, Xi, now the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, has launched a broadside against private business in China. Along with tightening regulations governing firms—mandating that companies have Communist Party committees, which can have significant input in their direction, for example—he is also targeting entrepreneurs themselves, as a collective and as individuals.
In September, he directly oversaw the imposition of an 18-year prison sentence, the longest for a political crime since the 1970s, on a real-estate executive who’d criticized him in a private email, according to two Communist Party members with direct knowledge of the case and a source close to the executive’s family—all of whom requested anonymity, fearing retribution. The following month, all indications are that he personally axed what would’ve been the world’s largest initial public offering, that of the financial firm Ant Group. Then, in November, a leading private businessman who ran an agricultural conglomerate, was arrested—ostensibly because of a dispute between his company and a state-owned farm, though a person close to him, who declined to be identified discussing the case, told me he was in jail because he’d spoken in favor of political reform. Finally, until a recent low-key appearance, Jack Ma, the founder of both Ant Group and the e-commerce giant Alibaba, hadn’t been seen in public for months after he criticized the party’s handling of financial reform.
Read: The Nazi inspiring China’s Communists
China’s private sector has played an enormous role in its rise. But as Michael Schuman wrote this month in The Atlantic, since Xi took the reins of power in China—first as party boss in 2012 and then as president in 2013—he has moved to reverse much of the country’s economic liberalization of recent decades. The number sequence 60/70/80/90 is used to delineate its contribution: As a rough rule of thumb, private firms churn out 60 percent of China’s GDP, generate 70 percent of its innovation, constitute 80 percent of urban employment, and create 90 percent of the country’s new jobs. Why is he messing with this golden goose? In a word, control.
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Ambassador Clark T. “Sandy” Randt, a classmate of President George W. Bush, was impressed with Xi. In a cable recounting the dinner, Randt described the discussion as “frank and friendly.” Xi, as he always did with Americans, had lauded Hollywood movies and, fittingly for the party boss from a province that was a hotbed of entrepreneurial energy, praised a new law that would protect private investors in China. Xi came off as a self-confident rising star, and a supporter of private business.
More than a decade later, Xi, now the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, has launched a broadside against private business in China. Along with tightening regulations governing firms—mandating that companies have Communist Party committees, which can have significant input in their direction, for example—he is also targeting entrepreneurs themselves, as a collective and as individuals.
In September, he directly oversaw the imposition of an 18-year prison sentence, the longest for a political crime since the 1970s, on a real-estate executive who’d criticized him in a private email, according to two Communist Party members with direct knowledge of the case and a source close to the executive’s family—all of whom requested anonymity, fearing retribution. The following month, all indications are that he personally axed what would’ve been the world’s largest initial public offering, that of the financial firm Ant Group. Then, in November, a leading private businessman who ran an agricultural conglomerate, was arrested—ostensibly because of a dispute between his company and a state-owned farm, though a person close to him, who declined to be identified discussing the case, told me he was in jail because he’d spoken in favor of political reform. Finally, until a recent low-key appearance, Jack Ma, the founder of both Ant Group and the e-commerce giant Alibaba, hadn’t been seen in public for months after he criticized the party’s handling of financial reform.
Read: The Nazi inspiring China’s Communists
China’s private sector has played an enormous role in its rise. But as Michael Schuman wrote this month in The Atlantic, since Xi took the reins of power in China—first as party boss in 2012 and then as president in 2013—he has moved to reverse much of the country’s economic liberalization of recent decades. The number sequence 60/70/80/90 is used to delineate its contribution: As a rough rule of thumb, private firms churn out 60 percent of China’s GDP, generate 70 percent of its innovation, constitute 80 percent of urban employment, and create 90 percent of the country’s new jobs. Why is he messing with this golden goose? In a word, control.
China’s Leader Attacks His Greatest Threat
Xi Jinping hasn’t just cracked down on private business—he is targeting individual entrepreneurs themselves.
