HONG KONG – Li Qianxin, the eldest daughter of the Chinese Communist Party’s No. 3 leader, has quietly made a living in Hong Kong crossing the city’s financial elite and the secret world of Chinese politics.
For years, she has mingled with senior executives of state-owned enterprises through professional clubs in Hong Kong and mainland, known for caring for the sons and daughters of officials. She has represented Hong Kong in Chinese provincial political advisory groups. She is the chairwoman of an investment bank in the state based in Hong Kong that has long done business with the relatives of top Chinese officials.
Ms. Li, 38, also has deep financial roots in the city after buying a $ 15 million, four-story village house high above a beach. Her partner owns a now retired purebred dog and has spent hundreds of millions on a stake in the stored Peninsula Hotel which he later sold.
Mrs Li and other members of the communist nobility are embedded in the fabric of Hong Kong society and financial system, tying the former British colony closer to the mainland. By building alliances and investing their money in Hong Kong’s real estate, China’s top leaders have inextricably linked it to the city’s fate.
As the party now takes a stronger hand in implementing Hong Kong, the top leadership in Beijing has political and personal interest. Li’s father, Li Zhanshu, oversees the rapid passage of Hong Kong’s new national security law, which gives the party a powerful new weapon to dismiss dissent.
The law could protect the families of the party’s leaders by stopping the protests that are causing havoc on the economy, or leaving them vulnerable by driving business confidence on the ground. It could also expose them to sanctions.
Already, the law has called for foreign countries that could threaten Hong Kong’s access to the global financial system. The Trump administration on Friday imposed sanctions on Hong Kong’s general government, Carrie Lam, and 10 other senior officials in the city and mainland who are accusing them of freedom in Hong Kong.
“Members of the Red Aristocracy in China, including the Princess, have made enormous investments in Hong Kong,” said Willy Lam, an associate professor of China studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “If Hong Kong suddenly loses its financial status, they can not park their money here.”
One of the leadership’s largest exhibitions on Hong Kong is in real estate. Including Ms. Li, relatives of three of the top four members of China’s Communist Party have bought luxury homes in recent years in combination with more than $ 51 million, according to a New York Times survey.
Qi Qiaoqiao, the older sister of Xi Jinping, the president of China, started buying properties in Hong Kong as early as 1991, according to Hong Kong property records. Her daughter, Zhang Yannan, owns a villa in Repulse Bay, which she bought in 2009 for $ 19.3 million, and at least five other apartments, according to the city’s property and business records.
Wang Xisha, a former executive of Deutsche Bank who is the daughter of Wang Yang, the no. 4-party leader, bought a $ 2 million home in Hong Kong in 2010, according to city ownership data.
The Communist Party has long been secretive about the wealth of many of its leaders’ relatives, aware that such an accumulation of wealth could be seen as the elite abusing its privilege for personal gain. In Hong Kong, the party also believes that the presence of princess could be further despair of Beijing.
Ms. Li, like many relatives of top Chinese officials, maintains a low profile.
On the mainland, there are not many mentions of Mr.’s family. Li in the party-controlled news media, and searching for his daughter’s name on social media sites yield minimal results. A trip to Nangoucun, his ancestral village in the northern province of Hebei, does not provide much insight into his children.
But internal documents from Deutsche Bank, obtained by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and reviewed by The New York Times late last year, refer to a woman with the same name in English and Chinese as Li Zhanshu’s older daughter, now no. 3-leader in China. These documents are part of an internal investigation, stemming from an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission into the politically connected rental houses of the bank.
The Hong Kong identity number used by Ms Li in a Hong Kong business record named by the directors of China Construction Bank International is the same as that used in the records linked to the coastal property and a company that she has with her partner.
A well-connected businessman and an employee have confirmed that Ms Li, who is an executive at China Construction Bank International, is the daughter of Li Zhanshu, as is a biography of the official written by Cheng Li, an expert on elite Chinese politics at the Brookings Institution.
The rest of their summary can be helped by newsletters and archived websites. They showed how Ms Li has strengthened her bond with the city in ways that position her well for a political career on the mainland.
She participated in networks such as the Hua Jing Society in Hong Kong that provide a forum for princesses to meet the children of the tycoons and political class of Hong Kong.
In 2013, she and other Hong Kong representatives from the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, like CPPCC, a party-run political advisory group, helped organize aid funds for a village. Two years later, she visited farmers and nurses in the same province to promote the United Front Work branch, a party unit that develops foreign political networks.
Ms. Li is now chairing China Construction Bank International, the investment arm of a major state narrator, according to business records in Beijing. Ms. Li, her partner and the bank did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Times.
“There is often an assumption that is simply well connected enough to advance in Chinese politics,” said Rana Mitter, a professor of Chinese history and politics at the University of Oxford, who did not comment specifically on Mrs. Li. “Actually, there is still a lot of interest in candidates proving themselves for higher office in institutions like the Communist Youth League and the CPPCC”
Like many other members of China’s communist elite, it has amassed significant wealth, according to a review of Hong Kong companies and real estate documents. Ms. Li also benefited from a tax haven popular with the rest of the world.
She bought the waterfront village house overlooking Stanley Beach through Century Joy Holdings Ltd., a Hong Kong-listed company listed in the British Virgin Islands, for $ 15 million in 2013, according to a document filed with the land register of the city.
Ms. Li, then 30, was the sole director of the Hong Kong entity. That entity was dissolved in October, hours after The Times contacted Ms. Li for comment prior to the publication of the article on Deutsche Bank’s lease in China.
Her partner, a 35-year-old Chinese-born Singaporean businessman, Chua Hwa Por, has used a similar strategy.
He was named as the sole beneficiary of a company registered in the British Virgin Islands, according to the Panama Papers, a leak of 2016 confidential documents that revealed how prominent business leaders and politicians may have used shell companies and offshore bank accounts to evade taxes. Mr. Chua uses a variety of addresses and different identity numbers, but he can be linked to Ms. Li, the properties and businesses through his Singaporean identity number.
The nature of Ms. Li’s relationship with Mr Chua is unclear, but they have a business together and have used the same home addresses in documents they have submitted to Hong Kong’s property and business registers. Hong Kong news outlets have speculated that the couple was married.
That year, he also began making some major purchases, according to listings with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. He took over Tai United, a little-known investment company listed in Hong Kong, and used it to buy trophy assets, including a large stake in the Peninsula Hotel and the 79th floor of an iconic skyscraper.
In July 2017, barely five months after he was appointed chairman of Tai United, Mr. Chua from the company. He stepped down immediately after Next Magazine, a Hong Kong news store owned by pro-democracy tycoon Jimmy Lai, reported on the purchases and his possible ties to Mr Li, the senior Chinese official. (The publisher, Mr. Lai, was arrested this week, accused of national security and other crimes.)
Mr. Li, the official, was on hand at the time for a promotion to the Politburo Standing Committee, the pinnacle of party power, and even the guise of corruption in his family would have been potentially damaging. In January of the following year, Mr. Chua most of his interest in Tai United.
Without public disclosure about the wealth of officials and their relatives, it is impossible to know how Mr. Chua and Mrs. Li received their income. There are legitimate reasons for people to own businesses offshore, and it is also not illegal for Chinese citizens to do so.
Shirley Yam, a leading financial writer in Hong Kong, also raised questions about the couple’s financial dealings in a 2017 column in The South China Morning Post, a local newspaper owned by Jack Ma, one of China’s richest tech tycoons .
The newspaper later pulled the column from its website, citing “multiple unverifiable insinuations.” Ms. Yam resigned, defending her column in a statement.
But if there had been any outbursts from the revelation, Mr. Li probably came unrestricted; in October 2017, he was elevated to the party’s powerful standing committee.
Since then, Mr. Chua has for the most part shaken off the public eye. But he and Ms Li remain co-owners of a company called Chua & Li Membership. In annual applications to the government, both had mentioned the $ 15 million beach house as their residence until earlier this year, when Ms. Li changed her address to an apartment owned by Mr. Chua on the 60th floor of an exclusive property.
Ms. Li made a rare public appearance in April 2019, attending an event that now appears to have damaged Hong Kong’s current fate.
She applauded alongside the Hong Kong leader, Ms. Lam, at the opening of an exhibition-sponsored exhibition promoting national security for Hong Kong, showing a promotional video for the event. Other special guests included the Deputy Commander of the People’s Liberation Army in Hong Kong and the directors of the highest offices representing the Hong Kong mainland authorities.
Shields and cold-proof fastenings hung on walls when members of the Hong Kong Army Cadets Association – a youth group supported by the government and the People’s Liberation Army – were taken on a tour of the exhibition.
Fourteen months later, Beijing imposed the Hong Kong National Security Act.
Sui-Lee Wee contributed reporting from Nangoucun, China.
