Business influence in China

Private sector attendance at China’s Communist party congress has fallen almost 50 per cent since Xi Jinping assumed power.

That compares with 34 executives at the congress in 2012, when Xi took charge, and 27 at the most recent congress in 2017. The dwindling participation under Xi contrasts with a 10 per cent increase in the reported number of party committees, to 1.6mn, at private sector companies over his first decade in power. By contrast, most of the 27 executives who attended the congress in 2017 ran small or medium-sized enterprises. That same year, only one delegate, Zhou Haijiang of Hongdou Group, ranked among China’s 500 wealthiest, compared with six such representatives in 2012.

«I couldn’t find a familiar name on the delegate list,» said an executive at a private business association whose members include companies founded by leading entrepreneurs. «Our best CEOs are absent from a conference that will shape their future,» added the executive, who asked not to be named. At this week’s congress, at which Xi is expected to be appointed to a third term as paramount leader and military commander-in-chief, just three executives from China’s top 500 private sector groups by revenue attend as delegates. Only one executive from the country’s once flourishing internet sector, dominated by private sector groups, is at the congress, the board secretary of Three Squirrels, an online snack store.

«This is something money can’t buy,» said an executive at a Beijing-based internet company. In September, a representative of the party’s robust personnel department told the official Xinhua News Agency that party loyalty was paramount for potential delegates. The organisation department, which selects congress delegates, listed six criteria for people hoping to attend, with adherence to Xi’s ideological teachings at the top. One of this year’s delegates is Cao Shiru, who runs a supermarket chain in the southwestern city of Chengdu.

A Chengdu-based entrepreneur, who was close to Cao, said she was vocal about her family’s ties to the party and would proudly talk about «her son’s previous job at the Ministry of State Security».

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