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China’s Wen pleads his innocence over hidden riches claim
AFP, HONG KONG
Former Chinese premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) has pleaded innocence over claims that his family amassed huge wealth during his decade in power, a Hong Kong columnist said, as Beijing ramps up a much-publicized crackdown on official corruption.
“I have never been involved and would not get involved in one single deal of abusing my power for personal gain because no such gains whatsoever could shake my convictions,” Wen said in a letter to Ng Hong-mun (吳康民), a columnist with the Ming Pao, a Hong Kong-based Chinese-language newspaper.
“I want to walk the last journey in this world well. I came to this world with bare hands and I want to leave this world clean,” Wen said, according to Ng’s column published on Saturday.
Wen’s letter, dated Dec. 27, follows a 2012 New York Times report that claimed his family controlled assets worth at least US$2.7 billion — a report China vigorously denounced as a smear.
Ng is a Hong Kong-based politician who frequently comments on relationships between Beijing and the territory, which was returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
He is known to have ties to Wen, and a photograph taken of both men and their wives after an April 2011 dinner in Beijing was circulated widely in the Hong Kong press.
News of Wen’s letter comes amid an escalating campaign by China’s leadership, led by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), to fight corruption among high-ranking officials, or “tigers,” as well as low-level “flies.”
Analysts say that while there is little chance that Wen himself would be ensnared in that crackdown, the former premier is under pressure to clear his name following the New York Times investigation.
Recent reports of an official probe into China’s former chief of internal security, Zhou Yongkang (周永康), a one-time member of the Chinese Communist Party’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee, could have prompted Wen to act, said Willy Lam (林和立), a politics specialist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
“I think the point of Wen Jiabao’s letter... is to pre-empt innuendo and speculation that he might be the next to go, after Zhou Yongkang,” Lam said.
“Because of the widespread publicity generated by the New York Times and other reports, there has also been speculation that Wen Jiabao could be the next one to come under the party discipline, if not public prosecution,” he added.
Lam said that it was “highly unlikely” that Wen himself would be charged, “the major reason being that all this action against top officials is connected with a power struggle within the party.”
The New York Times was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for its investigation into the wealth of Chinese leadership, but has also had its Web site blocked in China.
Several reporters for the newspaper have also had difficulty obtaining visas to report from China.
Wen stepped down as premier in March last year after a decade in power and was succeeded by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) in the party’s decennial leadership change.
source: Taipei Times
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