| Princelings | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Traditional Chinese | 太子黨 | ||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 太子党 | ||||||||||
| Literal meaning | Crown Prince Party/Faction | ||||||||||
| |||||||||||
ThePrincelings (Chinese:太子党), also translated as theParty's Crown Princes, are the descendants of prominent and influential senior communist officials in thePeople's Republic of China. It is an informal, and often derogatory, categorization to signify those believed to be benefiting fromnepotism andcronyism, by analogy with thecrown prince (Chinese:taizi) in hereditary monarchies. Many of its members have held high-level political and business positions in the upper echelons of power.
In contemporary China, "Princelings" are the descendants of seniorChinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders and have themselves risen to high-ranking positions within the CCP. If their parents belong to the first generation of CCP revolutionaries, they are also referred to as the "second Red Generation," "Red Heirs," or "the Red Nobility." Princelings also encompass the sons and daughters of later generations of top leaders, including figures like Jiang Zemin, Li Peng, and Hu Jintao.[1] Princelings exert their influence in the country either by occupying significant roles within the party-state apparatus, which includes the party, government, and military services, or by controlling substantial state-owned enterprises.[2] Opportunities are available to princelings that are not available to common people. Using their powerful connections they have the opportunity to obtain profitable opportunities for themselves and for others. The more aggressive of the princelings have amassed fortunes of hundreds of millions of dollars.[3] However, there is no discernible political cohesion within the group, and as such they should not be compared to other informal groupings such as theShanghai clique or theTuanpai ("Youth League clique"), which resemble intra-party factions with some degree of affinity on policy issues.
Under the People's Republic, the term initially came into use during the Cultural Revolution to describeLin Biao's sonLin Liguo as well as his close friends and allies who had been promoted alongside him into elite positions of thePeople's Liberation Army Air Force who were envisioned as the future "Third Generation" leadership of the CCP. In 1966, theCultural Revolution led to many Princelings to besent to rural China. Princelings lived in similar villages, worked together, and received their educations together.[1] After some years, the Princelings started to return to home (commonly areas like Shanghai or Beijing) however this crucial period of time had already led many Princelings to form lifelong friendships/partnerships.[1]
Following the death of Lin Liguo in afailed coup and the subsequent purges of this group, the term briefly fell out of use until the 1980s to label the children of theEight Elders and other First and Second Generation leaders who had been increasingly promoted in the party and were opposed to the efforts of reformersHu Yaobang andZhao Ziyang to curb corruption and cronyism. Notable contemporary Princelings includeXi Jinping (son ofXi Zhongxun), China'stop leader and PartyGeneral Secretary since 2012, andBo Xilai (son ofBo Yibo), a formerParty Committee Secretary ofChongqing who was also a member of thePolitburo. The political influence of princelings has weakened during the leadership of Xi Jinping, who has excluded them from the top leadership.[4]
The term was coined in the early 20th century in theRepublic of China, referring to theson ofYuan Shikai (aself-declared emperor) and hiscronies. It was later used to describe the relatives of the top four nationalist families;Chiang Kai-shek's kin,Soong Mei-ling's kin,Chen Lifu's kin, andKong Xiangxi's kin. After the 1950s, the term was used inTaiwan to describeChiang Ching-kuo, son of Chiang Kai-shek, and his friends. The latest generation of "crown princes" are inmainland China. The first generation of princelings in the PRC were the children of the initial revolutionaries. These children were initially raised in environments where their quality of life far eclipsed that of the ordinary Chinese citizen, often close to other princelings and senior party officials to develop a network of influence.[1] Many senior leaders often lobbied directly or indirectly for their descendants and relatives to succeed them.
Xiang Lanxin, professor of international history and politics at theGraduate Institute of International and Development Studies, explains it thus:
Historically, how to control local officials who possessed imperial lineage was always a problem. ThePolitburo is equivalent to the inner circle of the imperial household. Its members, if assigned a local administrative position, can easily overrule any opposition in their jurisdictions as no other party officials can match them in rank and prestige.[5]
Some of these crown princes are able to hold senior positions at the vice-ministerial level or above while still in their thirties, for which other ordinary cadres would struggle for decades. For national party positions, princelings often were promoted earlier and into higher positions than their non princeling counterparts.[1]
It is speculated that whenJiang Zemin was close to the end of his term for his age, he put many Princelings into important positions to appeal to senior leaders of the CCP and win their support for his continued influence. There is a trend towards Princelings taking over power step by step. Of these,Yu Zhengsheng, son ofHuang Jing, former mayor ofTianjin, was already a member of the powerfulpolitburo of the CCP;Wang Qishan, son-in-law ofYao Yilin (former vice premier and member of politburo), mayor of Beijing;Xi Jinping, Bo Xilai,Zhou Xiaochuan, son ofZhou Jiannan (former minister of the First Machinery Ministry and Jiang Zemin's former boss), governor of thePeople's Bank of China, have also occupied important positions since the17th Party Congress. Princelings have been holding a steady 5-6% of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CC-CCP) since the 12th Party Congress until 2012.[1]
In 2013 a "sons and daughters" program instituted byJPMorgan Chase to hire young princelings for positions in its Chinese operations came to light during a bribery investigation by the SEC. At times standards for hiring young princelings were more lenient than those imposed on other Chinese.[6] At least twelve of the princelings were revealed to have used companies in the offshoretax haven of theBritish Virgin Islands to store wealth in an investigation by theInternational Consortium of Investigative Journalists.[7]
The political influence of princelings have declined significantly under the leadership of Xi Jinping, who himself is considered one. The number of princelings in the CCP Central Committee peaked in the18th Central Committee, where there were a total of 41 princelings out of a total of 376 members and alternate members. By the beginning of the 20th Central Committee, their numbers decreased to 10, with the number further declining to 9 with the expelling ofLi Shangfu. Similarly, there were four out of the seven members of the18th Politburo Standing Committee members were princelings. in the20th Politburo Standing Committee, Xi is the only remaining princeling.[4] According toVoice of America, Xi "effectively excluded the second generation of princelings of his generation from China's highest decision-making and provincial-ministerial leadership".[8]
The following are some of the most famous crown princes:
A list of 226 princelings has been published (see link below).
In late 2015 and early 2016 the term "Zhao family" fromLu Xun's novellaThe True Story of Ah Q, went viral in China after it was used in an anonymous article "Barbarians at the Gate, Zhao Family Inside" to allude to princelings involvement in a business dispute.[15]
... a disparaging term for China's rich and politically well-connected.
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