New Delhi: Leading Chinese economist Zhu Hengpeng has reportedly vanished from the public eye after criticising President Xi Jinping in a private group chat.
The 55-year-old, who worked at a government-linked think tank, has now joined a long list of prominent Chinese figures and officials to have disappeared for various reasons.
Zhu’s offence? He allegedly questioned President Xi Jinping’s handling of China’s economy in a private group on WeChat. According to The Wall Street Journal, Zhu was detained and removed from his post and has not been seen in public since April when he attended a media event.
He had been working as the deputy director at the Institute of Economics and director of the Public Policy Research Center at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (Cass), set up by the State Council, China’s top administrative body.
This is not the first time a Chinese figure has disappeared from public life and Zhu’s, is the most high-profile case since then foreign minister Qin Gang and defence minister Li Shangfu disappeared before they were relieved from their roles last year.
The removal of the defence minister, just eight months after he was appointed, as well as the heads of the Rocket Force, generals Li Yuchao and Xu Zhongbo—responsible for the country’s conventional and nuclear missle forces—was part of a massive reshuffle in the People’s Liberation Army’s leadership. No official reason was given for their removal, but there was speculation that it was part of Xi’s efforts to root out corruption in the military.
However, given that all four of these top officials were considered Xi’s protégés, analysts said their ouster could hint at potential cracks in Xi’s hold on power in his unprecedented third term.
Jack Ma & others came back subdued
The Chinese administration is particularly sensitive to criticism and even civilians, journalists, sports stars and businessmen have gone missing in the past. And although a number of them later reappeared, they were noticeably subdued.
Jack Ma, the founder of the biggest Chinese e-commerce website, Alibaba, went missing in November 2020 after he criticised the country’s financial regulators. He paid for his comments days later when the planned stock market listing of Alibaba’s subsidiary, the Ant Group, was suspended. At $34 billion, it would have been the biggest initial public offering (IPO) in the world.
For three months, Ma was absent from public view. He was eventually spotted abroad. Since his return to China in 2021, the billionaire has kept a low profile.
COVID-19 whistleblower Dr Ai Fen, the former head of the emergency department at Wuhan Central Hospital, also disappeared from view in 2020. She was the first to detect cases of SARS-CoV-2 and had raised the alarm among colleagues and the media.
She was believed to have been detained after an interview in Ren Wu magazine, criticising censorship over what eventually became the coronavirus pandemic. The interview was later deleted.
She later reappeared in a video posted to her Weibo account.
Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai also disappeared in 2021 after she accused former vice premier Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault.
Users were restricted from searching her name on Weibo and a number of her posts, including the one where she made the accusations, also disappeared. She was spotted in public a few weeks later, apparently having been censored. Peng later denied making the accusations against Zhang.
With no official comments, there is only speculation on what Beijing has hoped to achieve in each of these cases. They continue to draw public and media attention, particularly due to their frequency.
The Atlantic Council said in 2023, “The disruptive impact of the sudden disappearances indicates underlying mistakes and misjudgments on the part of Xi and the personnel apparatus he oversees.”
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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