The Economist
September 4, 2012
Salacious rumours had started swirling on the internet within hours of the spectacular crash in March: another Ferrari in Beijing, another Chinese leader’s son. But which leader? Months later the answer appears to be emerging into view, just as the leadership negotiates a crucial transition of power.
In the pre-dawn hours of March 18th, less than 72 hours after the sacking of Chongqing’s party boss, Bo Xilai, a black Ferrari smashed into a wall at high speed on the capital’s Fourth Ring Road. Almost immediately Chinese microbloggers suggested that a senior leader’s son had been killed in the crash, with two young women seriously injured (and, rumour had it, found at the grisly scene naked, or in partial undress). The gossip had embarrassing resonance for the leadership because Mr Bo’s own son had been reported riding around Beijing in a Ferrari (a red one)—reports Mr Bo had felt compelled to deny publicly, just days before his ouster.
Censors moved quickly in a way that suggested there was indeed something to cover up. They deleted microblogged photographs of the crash site and blocked search terms like “Ferrari” and, later, “car sex”. The English-language edition of the Global Times, a state-owned newspaper, reported immediately and candidly on the crash, the censorship and the police’s refusal to disclose the name of the driver. The official Chinese-language media, by contrast, were quite obviously under orders not to publish anything. An air of mystery lingered.
Overseas Chinese websites, including Boxun, a fount of elite political gossip that occasionally proves true, eventually spun out a story that the man in the Ferrari was the son of Ling Jihua. Mr Ling was, until recently, the head of the party centre’s General Office and the closest thing that Hu Jintao, the general secretary, had to a chief of staff. When The Economist nosed around in the spring, a source said that Mr Ling’s son had not been seen attending one of his university classes since the time of the crash. But if true, there had been no evident political fallout for the father.
Until now, it appears. On September 1st Chinese official media reported Mr Ling’s new assignment as chief of the party’s United Front Work Department, a job with power—but not a promotion, as he had hoped. Mr Ling, not long ago considered a candidate for elevation this year to the Politburo (though not for its elite standing committee, as some reports have suggested), has been sidelined at the relatively young age of 55. On Monday the South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong newspaper, reported that Mr Ling’s son had indeed died in the Ferrari crash, and went on to draw a connection between that accident and the job shuffle.
This episode has been interpreted as a blow to Mr Hu amid the leadership’s negotiations over the make-up of the standing committee that will be named at a party congress this autumn. Mr Ling was a close ally of his who, the thinking goes, could have helped carry on Mr Hu’s interests after he hands over power at the congress to Xi Jinping, who is slated to become the party’s next general secretary. Some have even speculated that what hurts Mr Hu may help Mr Bo, who awaits a final verdict—and possibly a criminal sentence—now that his wife, Gu Kailai, has been convicted and imprisoned for the murder of Neil Heywood, a British businessman.
But it is far from clear how much Mr Hu has given up in this game. Mr Hu does not have a reputation for “taking care of his own people”, as some Chinese observers put it, but that does not mean he has surrendered all leverage. By agreeing to abandon Mr Ling, Mr Hu may be prioritising other battles. The appointment of Mr Ling’s successor, Li Zhanshu, does not signal any obvious weakness on the part of Mr Hu. It is true that Mr Li has known Mr Xi since the 1980s, but he made his ascent through the ranks of the Communist Youth League, Mr Hu’s base of power, and was most recently party secretary of Guizhou, where Mr Hu served as well.
Nor is it yet clear how seriously Mr Ling’s career has been damaged. Accident or not, he would have faced formidable competition for the best jobs on offer, such as Beijing party secretary or head of the party’s powerful Organisation Department. As it is, he has an opportunity to emerge from the shadows of party machinery at the United Front; the task of managing relations with ethnic minorities gives him a potentially high-profile role in China’s most sensitive border regions of Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang and Tibet. In theory he is young enough to be promoted to the Politburo in future—like all seven of the men who have preceded him as director of the General Office since 1978. Five of them went on to serve on the standing committee (including the current premier, Wen Jiabao).
Nor, finally, is there any indication that the fallout of the Ferrari crash will benefit Mr Bo, whose own son’s affinity for luxury sports cars did his father no favours. Communist leaders’ families can afford Ferraris somehow, but it seems they can ill afford to let them roar.
