Another turn of the screw
The detention of Fosun’s boss shows that even China’s biggest tycoons are no longer safe from the regime’s crackdowns
THE three-year crackdown overseen by President Xi Jinping against corruption and other threats to the leadership of China’s Communist Party has taken aim at many targets: senior party figures and officials, the bosses of state firms, civil-rights activists, labour organisers and human-rights lawyers. This week in Beijing, outside the trial of Pu Zhiqiang, a free-speech campaigner, diplomats and foreign journalists were among those manhandled by organised goons. Until now, however, one group of Chinese citizens had seemed immune from such harassment: the country’s self-made, private-sector billionaires.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Another turn of the screw”
From the December 19th 2015 edition
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