The Washington Post
February 21, 2006

Corruption charges have swirled for years around Li Peng’s family. New allegations of nepotism involving Huaneng International have angered the party leadership and copies of the publication in which they appeared are being confiscated.

Beijing: In late November, the wife of China’s second-most-powerful man gave a rare interview to a glossy publication famed for its puff pieces on the country’s rich and famous. Zhu Lin, the wife of Li Peng, the architect of the bloody crackdown around Tiananmen Square in 1989, commented that her favorite colors were red, white and yellow, said she didn’t have her own makeup artist or hairdresser, and said she favored imported cosmetics. Zhu, considered the most influential wife of any Chinese leader, also said she owned no stock in any company and was never a general manager or chairman of any Chinese corporation. In a country in which the cloistered leadership rarely lets down its guard, Zhu’s remarks prompted many observers to ask: Why did she give the interview? And why now? The answer is that Zhu was trying to deflect attention from fresh charges of corruption. Her decision to go public was a sign of the fragility of China’s aging leadership and the suspicions surrounding it as it enters a pivotal year, one that will bring a large-scale changing of the guard of the Communist Party. It also showed that China’s ruling class, once all but immune to public opinion, now feels compelled to respond to allegations from the public about malfeasance, nepotism and sleaze. Corruption charges have swirled around Li’s family for years and have centered on Zhu. New charges of nepotism were recently aired in a publication that claims a circulation of 5 million copies a week. The allegations have angered the party leadership and were so sensitive that copies of the publication are being confiscated. The allegations appeared in the Nov. 24 edition of Securities Weekly, one of the biggest financial publications serving China’s ever-expanding pool of stock market investors.