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BEIJING: Chinese real estate mogul and outspoken critic of President Xi Jinping was jailed for 18 years on Tuesday (September 22) for “corruption, bribery and embezzlement of public funds,” according to a court statement.
Ren Zhiqiang, once an elite among the ruling Communist Party’s inner circle, disappeared from the public eye in March, shortly after writing an essay that was fiercely critical of Xi’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.
Tuesday’s verdict said Ren embezzled nearly 50 million yuan (US $ 7.4 million) of public funds and accepted bribes worth 1.25 million yuan, according to a statement from the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court.
He said the 69-year-old man “willingly and sincerely confessed to all his crimes” and would not appeal the court’s decision.
A police van carrying Ren Zhiqiang, a Chinese tycoon and outspoken critic of President Xi Jinping, arrives at court at the start of his trial earlier this month. (Photo: AFP / Nicolas Asfouri)
He was also fined 4.2 million yuan ($ 620,000).
Rights activists accuse Xi and the Communist Party of using corruption allegations as a way to silence dissent.
Beijing has stepped up its crackdown on civil society since Xi took office in 2012, tightening restrictions on freedom of expression and detaining hundreds of activists and lawyers.
Ren, the former chairman of state-owned real estate developer Huayuan Group, earned the nickname “Big Cannon” for his outspoken criticism of Chinese leadership.
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The Communist Party’s disciplinary watchdog launched an investigation into Ren in April and the trial was opened in a Beijing court on September 11.with a handful of supporters outside and a heavy police presence.
Ren’s essay from earlier this year, which criticized Xi, was removed from China’s internet, which regularly censors content that defies authorities, but was shared online outside of China.
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“This epidemic has revealed the fact that the Party and government officials are only concerned with protecting their own interests, and the monarch is only concerned with protecting his interests and central position,” Ren wrote, without naming Xi.
His influential blog on the Weibo platform, similar to Twitter, attracted millions of followers before authorities closed his account in 2016, after he repeatedly called for greater freedom of the press.
The son of a former vice minister of commerce and a member of the Communist Party for decades before being ousted in July, Ren was well connected with the party’s elites.
He wrote in his memoirs that he had been friends with Vice President and former anti-corruption chief Wang Qishan since they were teenagers, when his school assigned Wang to mentor young Ren.
He is also a controversial figure, particularly in his defense of high house prices in China, once telling Chinese media that people who had not been willing to invest in real estate before the boom “now deserve to be poor.”
