Chinese premier Wen`s family worth $2.7 bln: NY Times

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, who is considered a pro-working class leader urging political reform, and his family are known to possess wealth worth 2.7 billion U.S. dollars, the New York Times reported Thursday.

The daily said the combined wealth held by Wen’s mother, wife, brother-in-law and children in their names and borrowed names amount to at least 2.7 billion dollars. They hold stakes in a number of companies including those in financing, jewelry, resorts, telecommunications and social overhead capital, or real estate assets.

The wealth of Wen`s family has snowballed since 1998, when he assumed the premiership, thanks in part to the family`s participation in the construction of the main stadium of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Circumstantial evidence also showed that the Wens hold part of their stakes in a complicated web of as many as five steps to hide the real identities of the owners.

Wen’s mother, Yang Zhiyun, 90, is known to have groomed her son into a leader despite extreme poverty, but she holds a stake worth 120 million dollars in Ping An, a financial services company. Documents show that she holds the wealth through Tiahong, a holding company registered in Wen’s hometown of Tianjin.

Confirmed stakes alone in Ping An held by Yang and Wen’s relatives are worth as much as 823 million dollars. The company was listed in 2007 after Wen lifted restrictions on an owner’s capital in 2004. His immediate family and relatives bought shares of the company before the listing and pocketed massive gains.

Wen’s younger brother Wen Jiahong won government contracts worth more than 30 million dollars in sewage and medical waste treatment. This was possible after Wen toughened regulations on waste management following the 2003 outbreak of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome.

The premier`s wife Zhang Beili, nicknamed “Queen of Diamonds,” is known as a dominant player in the Chinese jewelry industry. She founded a jewelry company with state funds and let her relatives buy stakes, though no records suggest that the assets belong to her.

Their son Wen Yun Song, who uses the English name Winston, established three IT companies in 2000, and two of them were bought by relatives of Li Ka-shing, Asia’s richest business tycoon based in Hong Kong. The news report said business moguls in Greater China helped the Wen family amass wealth.

The New York Times said its report was the result of analysis of companies’ public disclosures and data from regulatory agencies. But much of the report was based on data that is difficult to collect without an internal whistleblower in the Chinese government, as the disclosures include the composition of shareholders in unlisted investment companies that the Wen family has investments in. Experts say someone intentionally tipped the newspaper about the suspicions. Wen has been targeted because of his image as “the people’s premier” and even earned the nickname “Grandpa Wen.”

Boxun News, an Internet media outlet whose server is based in the U.S., claimed that Chinese leftist groups handed over to Western media data on the family of not only Wen but also that of Xi Jinping, the heir apparent to President Hu Jintao. This is reportedly a reflection of the intense power struggle underway in the Chinese leadership.

Beijing was quick to blast the New York Times report, with Chinese foreign media spokesman Hong Lei telling a media briefing Friday, “(It) is intentionally damaging China.”

Soon after the report went online, Chinese authorities blocked access to the newspaper’s website. Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, also blocked searches with the name Wen Jiabao.

koh@donga.com