{"id":12387,"date":"2016-04-07T21:13:32","date_gmt":"2016-04-06T09:49:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinaworker.info\/?p=12387"},"modified":"2016-04-07T14:56:31","modified_gmt":"2016-04-07T06:56:31","slug":"panama-papers-eight-chinese-leaders-named","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinaworker.info\/en\/2016\/04\/07\/12387\/","title":{"rendered":"Panama Papers: Eight Chinese leaders named"},"content":{"rendered":"

Massive clampdown by state media censors fearing Iceland-like revolt<\/strong><\/p>\n

Vincent Kolo, chinaworker.info<\/p>\n

No government is doing more to hide the damaging revelations contained in the \u2018Panama Papers\u2019 than the Chinese dictatorship. The \u2018Panama Papers\u2019 are having a\u00a0potentially explosive effect\u00a0around the world, revealing the massive use of tax havens and fake companies (around 200,000 according to the report) by the world\u2019s super-rich to conceal their wealth.<\/p>\n

Coming at a time when global inequality\u00a0has never been more rife\u00a0\u2013 just 62 top capitalists own as much as the poorest half of humanity according to an Oxfam study \u2013\u00a0the release of the \u2018Panama Papers\u2019 is giving\u00a0the world\u2019s rich and powerful sleepless nights. The report was compiled by a team of campaigning journalists, ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists), drawing from\u00a0a huge dossier\u00a0of stolen documents from the Mossack Fonseca\u00a0law firm in Panama.<\/p>\n

Particular attention has focused on the 140 political leaders named among this tax-and-publicity-shy\u00a0global elite, including eight current or former members of the Chinese Politburo Standing Committee, the pinnacle of power within the dictatorship. Other figures outed by the \u2018Panama Papers\u2019 include Britain\u2019s right wing and pro-China Prime Minister, David Cameron, whose late father set up a\u00a0company in Panama for tax evasion purposes. Another politician\u00a0hit\u00a0by the scandal is the leader of France\u2019s extreme right National Front (FN), Marine\u00a0Le Pen. Prominent FN-linked figures including Le\u00a0Pen\u2019s father are suspected of\u00a0shifting vast sums abroad for tax evasion purposes knocking a big hole in this party\u2019s \u2018patriotic\u2019 image.<\/p>\n

The biggest political casualty to date is the Prime Minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Dav\u00ed\u00f0 Gunnlaugsson, who was forced to resign yesterday by mass protests outside the country\u2019s parliament. The people of Iceland have\u00a0suffered years of painful austerity measures\u00a0since the\u00a0economy collapsed amid the global banking meltdown of 2008. The revelations that Gunnlaugsson\u2019s family had money stashed away in an offshore haven led popular anger to boil over.<\/p>\n

\"Mass
Mass protest in Rejkjavic, Iceland, forced Prime Minister to quit.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Unprecedented media clamp down<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Chinese regime is going to unprecedented lengths to suppress news of the \u2018Panama Papers\u2019 inside the country. The word \u2018Panama\u2019 is blocked on internet search engines and strict directives have been sent to all media outlets not to report the issue. \u201cPlease act immediately… Find and delete reprinted reports on the Panama Papers. Do not follow up on related content, no exceptions. If material from foreign media attacking China is found on any website, it will be dealt with severely,\u201d reads the order\u00a0from one provincial internet censorship office, a copy of which was obtained by US-based website China Digital Times.<\/p>\n

Typically, what limited mention\u00a0there has been of\u00a0the \u2018Panama Papers\u2019 in China\u2019s state-controlled media has\u00a0used\u00a0anti-Western nationalism to try to discredit the material. Beijing\u2019s notoriously nationalistic Global Times, while admitting that the \u2018Panama Papers\u2019 may be genuine, makes the absurd claim that their publication is a US-inspired plot. Not mentioning any connection to China\u2019s leaders, the Global Times instead presents\u00a0Russian leader Vladimir Putin, one of the\u00a0most prominent\u00a0figures to be identified in the \u2018Panama Papers\u2019, as a victim of a Western\u00a0witch-hunt.<\/p>\n

This is a classical attempt at misdirection by the\u00a0Chinese regime. In truth\u00a0the revelations in the \u2018Panama Papers\u2019 are highly damaging to Western capitalism and its political servants, as the graphic example of Iceland shows. After almost a decade of biting austerity and sinking living standards in many Western economies, these documents show the political double standards of governments and the extent to which ruling elites have been shielding their grotesque wealth from public scrutiny. Many of the politicians named are warmongers who dress themselves in the \u2018national\u2019 flag to gain public support, while their families have gone to incredible lengths to make sure that the nation\u2019s laws and taxation regimes don\u2019t apply to their own wealth.<\/p>\n

\"Three
Three members of the current seven-man Politburo Standing Committee are mention in the Panama Papers.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Three of seven Politburo Standing Committee members<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is also the case in China, where President Xi Jinping bases his rule on increasing\u00a0nationalism\u00a0and\u00a0the \u2018great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation\u2019 while his brother-in-law Deng Jiagu and sister Qi Qiaoqiao are named in the documents from Mossack Fonseca as having set up two companies in the British Virgin Islands, a tax haven. The revelations about Xi\u2019s family are not new. A\u00a0Bloomberg investigation in 2012 showed the president\u2019s family owned\u00a0financial assets worth 376 million US dollars at that time.<\/p>\n

In total, the families of three of the seven current Politburo Standing Committee members are identified in the \u2018Panama Papers\u2019 as having links\u00a0to shady offshore companies. In addition to Xi, the others are Liu Yunshan and Zhang Gaoli. Five former Standing Committee members are also named. In the Chinese political system\u00a0such\u00a0revelations\u00a0often feature in internal power struggles\u00a0with\u00a0rival cliques trying to heap\u00a0scandal upon\u00a0their opponents. This explains why the regime is so desperate to clamp down on all media coverage.<\/p>\n

The scale of China\u2019s involvement in this affair is another reason for the unprecedented media blackout. The biggest proportion of offshore companies set up through Mossack Fonseca \u2013 29 percent of the total \u2013 originate\u00a0from China\u00a0and\u00a0Hong Kong. Between US$1 trillion and US$4 trillion in untraceable assets had left China since 2000, the ICIJ report says.<\/p>\n

China is therefore no exception to the global scandal that the \u2018Panama Papers\u2019 have generated. These revelations have come at a time of deepening crisis and divisions within China\u2019s ruling elite as the economy derails. The dictatorship fears more Iceland-like revolts could develop, even at home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Massive clampdown by state media censors fearing Iceland-like revolt<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":12388,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[132,133,148,124],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12387","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-china","8":"category-hong-kong","9":"category-international","10":"category-news"},"yoast_head":"\nPanama Papers: Eight Chinese leaders named - China Worker<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/chinaworker.info\/en\/2016\/04\/07\/12387\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Panama Papers: Eight Chinese leaders named - 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