Guilty of corruption, bribery and embezzlement of public funds – this is the verdict that stipulated in Beijing that former business magnate and critic of Chinese President Xi Jinping should spend 18 years behind bars. A man named Zhen Zhichiang has to pay a fine of 4.2 million yuan (about 14 million crowns), according to the state-run China Times server Global Times. It was enough to dislike the critical essay.
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Zhichiang Women is one of the mysteriously extinct and subsequently found Chinese. In March, he was no longer seen or heard about after he wrote an essay in which he indirectly criticized the Chinese president. Although his words were not specific, the needy goose spoke up and “justice” found him.
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In an inappropriate essay, Women addressed the way Beijing handles coronavirus. He published the text shortly after the president’s televised speech. “I, too, listened curiously and conscientiously. But what I heard was not the emperor standing there exposing his ‘new clothes’, but the clown who stripped naked and insisted that he remained the emperor, “the server said against the server. China Digital Times.
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Shortly afterwards, there was information that a woman was being investigated for “suspicion of a serious disciplinary offense.” According to the Beijing People’s Court, the women were to accept bribes worth 1.25 million yuan and embezzle another 50 million. According to the Chinese media, he admitted to everything “voluntarily” and is not going to appeal against the decision. He was also stripped of his membership in the Communist Party.
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The former chairman of Huayuan Property Company was not just a business magnate. He is the son of a ministerial official with strong ties to high-ranking party leaders. He was in a position where any open criticism would sound particularly painful. According to human rights organizations, accusations of corruption are one of the ways to suppress dissent.
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According to a foreign correspondent BBC Stephen McDonell, it is difficult for a person living outside of China to imagine the risk posed by public criticism of Xi Jinping. “Attacking the government is one thing, but calling the president an undressed clown must have been incredibly shocking,” McDonell said, recalling that the mood in contemporary China is strikingly similar to that of the Mao Zedong era.
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The most striking similarity is the view of the deification of Si Jinping’s person – his work to alleviate poverty is described as brilliant, it is spoken of only in superlatives.
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In the case of Zhichiang, the situation is all the more alarming because he was close to party elites. As a former chairman of a huge development company, he often moved in high-ranking party circles. However, the party itself is the judiciary itself, which has decided that Women should go to prison for 18 years for their criticism.
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This is not the first time that Women, nicknamed the “Great Cannon” for their openness, have gotten into trouble. In 2016, China canceled his social media accounts due to the president’s criticism. Among other things, he also mentioned that the state media are funded by taxpayers and should therefore serve the people, not the Communist Party. The state media then called him an anti-communist.
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