[Yao Yao Jiang] Why Did Li Zhanshu Disappear After Retirement? Did Li Qianxin Manage Wealth for Xi's Family? | Li Zhanshu, the Master of Hiding Wealth
This video exposes the hidden immense wealth of the family of former high-ranking CCP official Li Zhanshu. Through a joint investigation by Hong Kong journalists and The New York Times, it reveals how Li Zhanshu's daughter, Li Qianxin, and her partner, Cai Huabo, used Hong Kong's financial markets and offshore companies for massive asset operations. The investigation involves listed company control, hotel equity, office buildings, and traces Deutsche Bank's "relationship hiring" scandal. Despite media exposure and ongoing investigations, the political careers of Li Qianxin and Li Zhanshu were not directly affected; however, the deterioration of Hong Kong's press freedom environment has made public reporting on such investigations increasingly difficult.
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Hello everyone, I am Yaoyaojiang. Li Zhanshu was once the third-ranking leader of the CCP and one of Xi Jinping's most trusted individuals. Starting in 2011, Hong Kong journalists began paying attention to the wealth of Li Zhanshu's family. The first puzzle they encountered was the inability to verify whether Li Zhanshu's child was a boy or a girl, or what their name was. Over the following decade, journalists from Hong Kong and the United States pursued the investigation in relay waves; some conducted close surveillance, while others repeatedly cross-referenced public archives and leaked documents, eventually uncovering just a corner of the deeply hidden wealth of Li Zhanshu's family. Due to my profession, I have studied the family wealth of quite a few political figures, and Li Zhanshu's family is one of the hardest to investigate. Today, let's examine how journalists step by step uncovered the wealth of Li Zhanshu's family, and how the Li family managed to hide these financial footprints.
In September 2012, two months before the 18th National Congress, Li Zhanshu was transferred from Guizhou to Beijing to succeed Ling Jihua as Director of the General Office of the CCP Central Committee. Ling Jihua had just been removed from his post amid a political storm triggered by his son's car accident, and with Xi Jinping about to take power, the position of Director of the General Office had to be handed to someone absolutely reliable. Xi Jinping selected Li Zhanshu. Their relationship dates back 30 years. In 1983, Li Zhanshu served as the Party Secretary of Wuji County in Hebei, and at almost the same time, Xi Jinping served as the Party Secretary of Zhengding County. Wuji and Zhengding are not far apart. In 1984, the Organization Department of the CCP Central Committee inspected third-tier cadres in Hebei, and both of them entered the provincial reserve cadre list at the same time. Afterwards, Xi Jinping went south to Fujian, Zhejiang, and Shanghai, while Li Zhanshu remained in the north, successively moving to Shaanxi and Heilongjiang, and later governing Guizhou.
In 2000, while serving in Shaanxi, Li Zhanshu accompanied Xi Jinping's mother Qi Xin, sister Qi Qiaoqiao, and brother Xi Yuanping to pay homage to the Weibei Revolutionary Martyrs Monument. By that time, interactions between Li Zhanshu and the Xi family had moved beyond ordinary official colleagues and entered the family level. In 2007, their political careers drifted apart for a time because Xi Jinping had already entered the Politburo Standing Committee, whereas Li Zhanshu was still only the Governor of Heilongjiang. However, Li Zhanshu did not leave the Xi family's circle of relations. In 2012, Xi Jinping handed over the General Office to Li Zhanshu. Five years later, Li Zhanshu entered the Politburo Standing Committee, ranking third. In 2018, he took office as the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, becoming one of the most trusted core figures for Xi Jinping during his first and second terms.
After Li Zhanshu entered Zhongnanhai, Hong Kong media began investigating his family, and reporters quickly discovered that information about the family members of the highest CCP leadership is not ordinary privacy, but a set of public archives artificially blacked out. Li Zhanshu's official resume meticulously records his entry into the workforce, party membership, educational background, and every job transfer, yet it fails to state how many children he has or what his children are named.
In September 2012, Apple Daily published a report with the headline reading directly: "Li Zhanshu’s Daughter: In Her Twenties, Appointed Vice President of CITIC Capital." The article quoted a sentimental poem written by Li Zhanshu, one line of which reads, "Cherished like a palm-held jade," and subsequently pointed out that this palm-held jade was named Li Qianxin. The report also listed a series of resumes, stating that Li Qianxin, in her twenties, was already serving as vice president of CITIC Capital, was one of the twelve vice chairpersons of the Hong Kong Huajing Youth Association, had served as a standing committee member of the Heilongjiang Provincial Youth Federation, and was also a member of the Yunnan Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).
A Standing Committee member's daughter, who had previously been almost unknown to the public, had already left her complete footprint and opportunities in Hong Kong's financial, political, and business organizations. Established in Hong Kong in 2011, its members were mostly young elites who grew up in the mainland, studied overseas, and then entered Hong Kong's financial and professional institutions. This organization held forums, internships, and mainland exchanges. For Li Qianxin, the Huajing Youth Association was a platform to intervene in Hong Kong's political and business circles, while for reporters, it accidentally preserved a public identity directory suspected of belonging to the descendants of senior CCP officials. Over the years, several new resumes were distributed across different systems, but no single document could independently write out Li's complete family relationship.
Moreover, this report had a key gap: Li Zhanshu's poem only wrote the three words "palm-held commercial reputation" (a typo in original text), which could only prove that his child was a daughter, but the three characters Li Qianxin did not appear. Therefore, it was difficult to confirm that this Li Qianxin in Hong Kong's financial circle was Li Zhanshu's daughter, prompting continued forward investigation.
On May 6, 2011, Guizhou Province held an investment promotion conference in Hong Kong. The Sun wrote that the most eye-catching person at the scene should be Li Qianxin, the daughter of Guizhou Provincial Party Secretary Li Zhanshu. The report also featured photos of her at the venue and mentioned that she worked in a Hong Kong investment bank. Other sources pointed the earliest reports to The Oriental Daily's coverage of the establishment of the Huajing Youth Association in March 2011, but the original footage could no longer be searched. What could be nailed down was that The Sun and The Oriental Daily had publicly designated Li Qianxin as his daughter one year before Li Zhanshu entered Zhongnanhai.
The issue therefore became a bit specific. Hong Kong's business circles actually knew Li Qianxin's identity long ago, and the media dared to write it out directly, but as Hong Kong's old media archives disappeared, the evidence was gone. We re-arranged the public tracks of the father and daughter to make a comparison. Li Zhanshu was transferred to Heilongjiang in 2003, and Li Qianxin subsequently entered the Heilongjiang Provincial Youth Federation. Li Zhanshu was transferred to serve as the Party Secretary of Guizhou Provincial Committee in 2010, and in the following year, Li Qianxin appeared at the Guizhou and Hong Kong investment promotion conferences. She also appeared in the public resumes of CITIC Capital opportunities and the Yunnan Provincial CPPCC.
These tracks constituted strong circumstantial evidence, but not a signed document. Early Hong Kong reporters had already given the answer, but did not leave behind the investigation and argumentation process. Therefore, whether Li Qianxin's father was truly Li Zhanshu could not yet be said to be set in stone, in my view. There was no further progress on Li Qianxin's identity.
However, a male suddenly entered the reporters' investigative horizon. In 2016, a company with a peculiar name appeared in the Hong Kong company registration database, with the Pinyin spelling Chua & Li membership. This Chua was written in Pinyin, but in fact it corresponded to the surname Cai with a grass radical in Chinese. The surnames Cai and Li were directly placed in the company's name. Company documents showed that these two shareholders held half the shares each, one named Li Qianxin and the other named Cai Huabo. The two also left mutually integrated residential addresses. So who on earth was Cai Huabo?
Reporters turned to the board resumes and equity disclosures of Taihe Holdings, a Hong Kong-listed company, which listed both English and Chinese names as Cai Huabo. Holding a Singaporean passport, Cai Huabo was a few years younger than Li. He was not a person appearing in the Li family's official materials, nor was he the heir of a traditional wealthy family in Hong Kong. Yet when reporters found him, this thirty-something young man had already begun making large transactions in the Hong Kong capital market.
The same year, the Panama Papers were made public, with leaked files exceeding 11 million and a data volume reaching 2.6TB. The Panama Papers showed that Cai Huabo was listed as the sole beneficial owner of a British Virgin Islands company. This beneficial owner pointed to the person who ultimately enjoyed the company's benefits. This record proved that Cai Huabo indeed used an offshore structure to hold assets. Offshore companies themselves did not violate the leaked files, nor did they show how much money was actually contained in this company. What it advanced was identity recognition.
Since Cai Huabo's Singaporean ID number had never changed, reporters could use this ID number to merge the Cai Huabo in the Panama Papers and the Cai Huabo at the shared address with Li Qianxin into the same person. Without Cai Huabo, reporters could only see Li Qianxin's resumes in CITIC Capital opportunities and the CPPCC system. After Cai Huabo appeared, a string of assets that could be tracked by documents followed: listed company control, equity in the parent company of the Peninsula Hotel, office buildings in Central, racehorses, and offshore companies. The investigation into the Li family's wealth finally had an entry point that could be put on paper. The next step was no longer to search for a senior official's daughter, but to question why this young Singaporean businessman surnamed Cai could mobilize such huge capital in Hong Kong.
In 2017, Jimmy Lai's Next Magazine in Hong Kong began tracking Cai Huabo. By this time, he had already taken control of the Hong Kong-listed company Taihe Holdings and was heavily buying shares in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels group. This company owns the Peninsula Hong Kong, one of the most iconic and established enterprises in the city. By the summer of 2007, Cai's stake had risen to 11.79%, with an investment close to HK$1.5 billion, making him the second-largest shareholder of the company. Taihe Holdings also bought the entire 79th floor of the Center in Central for about HK$500 million. Cai Huabo also owned a racehorse named Red Hare Supreme, and the purchase price was reported to be over HK$10 million.
Cai Huabo's speed in entering Taihe Holdings was equally striking. On February 1, 2017, he was appointed as executive director and chairman of the board of directors. Company documents showed that he controlled a large number of shares through Taihe Financial Group, which he wholly owned. In the same year, a transaction document listed it as the controlling shareholder of Taihe Holdings, actually controlling about two-thirds of the company's issued share capital. What Cai Huabo obtained was not an ordinary director position, but a capital machine capable of making acquisitions using the credit and funds of a listed company.
None of these directly equated to the personal wealth of Li Zhanshu's family, but the transactions themselves were undisputed. A Singaporean businessman in his early thirties, previously unknown, was mobilizing billions of Hong Kong dollars through a Hong Kong-listed company. Next Magazine reporters tracked Cai Huabo's whereabouts while reviewing company archives, matching the figures in reality with the names in the documents one by one.
The Hong Kong securities market has a rule that when a shareholder crosses the disclosure threshold or continues to increase holdings, they must declare their name, number of shares, and the date of change. Every time Cai Huabo bought a batch of shares in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels, an extra record appeared in the regulatory system. Racehorses also leave records. The Hong Kong Jockey Club makes public the owners, horses, and racing records. The English name of Red Hare Supreme is Limitless. Cai became a registered horse owner at the age of thirty-one. After the horse won a race in 2001, he once posed publicly for photos holding a bottle of wine. For reporters, racehorses were not decorations rendering a wealthy lifestyle, but another public entry point where names, dates, and ownership were preserved by the Hong Kong system.
What truly reconnected these assets back to Li Zhanshu's family was not reporters capturing the two individuals in the same frame, but an address. Reporters continued to trace down the company filings and found No. 6 Stanley Beach Road in Hong Kong, an address that repeatedly appeared simultaneously in documents submitted by Li Qianxin and Cai Huabo. Checking the annual return of Chua & Li member as well, as of April 8, 2017, Li Qianxin and Cai Huabo still each held half of the shares. The shared company, shared address, and continuous filings cemented the couple's relationship in government archives.
Cai was no longer an overseas investor unrelated to the Li family. Existing documents could prove the relationship between the two and the scale of capital controlled by Cai Huabo, but they could not answer where the funds came from. Next Magazine raised questions but did not obtain bank statements. While Hong Kong reporters continued their investigation, another financial columnist, Shirley Yam of the South China Morning Post, put these public records together and began an investigation.
At this critical juncture, Cai Huabo suddenly surrendered the top position of the listed company. Next Magazine was already catching up to his whereabouts, and Hong Kong reporters had launched investigations surrounding his relationship with the Li family. Whether his resignation was related to the interview questions sent by reporters, there was no direct evidence at present, but it was certain that this move occurred before the relevant reports were published publicly.
One week after Cai Huabo's resignation, on July 18, 2017, the investigative report by financial columnist Shirley Yam was published in the South China Morning Post. The headline directly asked: What is the relationship between this Singaporean investor of the Peninsula Hotel's parent company and Xi Jinping's confidant? The core materials listed by people were not mysterious: Cai Huabo and Li Qianxin used the same address, both served as directors and shareholders of the same company, and Cai Huabo was heavily increasing his holdings in the Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels group.
On July 20, however, the article was pulled down. The South China Morning Post issued a statement saying that senior editors re-examined it and found that the article contained multiple unverified insinuations, failing to meet publication standards. The newspaper called an article that had already passed editorial review, gone online, and been printed a regrettable mistake, and apologized to readers.
The Hong Kong Journalists Association later investigated this retraction in its annual report, and people stated to the association that they had no doubts about the article. The article was not suddenly put online without review, but was published twenty-four hours after editorial review. To ensure clear wording and control legal risks, he also discussed and revised the manuscript with editors.
At that time, the South China Morning Post was already wholly owned by Alibaba. There was no evidence in public data that Jack Ma or Alibaba directly ordered the article's retraction. The confirmed fact was that the senior editorial tier pulled down an article involving the family of Xi Jinping's core ally, while never publicly pointing out which exact fact was wrong in it. Ultimately, the only one bearing the consequences was author Shirley Yam, whose column subsequently stopped updating. Over a month later, she ended her 11-year career as a columnist at the South China Morning Post. The article disappeared, and the person who wrote the article also left.
However, the records in the Hong Kong Companies Registry and securities market did not disappear accordingly. Even more suspiciously, before the report was published, Cai Huabo had already resigned from his position. A reasonable speculation is that before public reporting, journalists usually call or send emails asking the parties concerned to verify and respond. Did Cai Huabo receive interview questions involving the Li family, and did he surrender his chairmanship as a result? We have no direct evidence, but Next Magazine had already caught up at the time, and Hong Kong journalists had also begun investigating and asking questions. Cai Huabo certainly knew before the readers that he was going to be exposed to public opinion, which also shows his sensitivity to the relevant reports and his swift actions.
After the storm, Cai Huabo did not sell his shares immediately. It was not until half a year later, in January 2018, that he sold most of his shareholdings. Resigning swiftly to step behind the scenes, he first made himself invisible from the chairman position of the listed company, while his subsequent move to sell stocks was weighed and planned over a longer period. It was a step-by-step asset concealment and retreat, gradually sealing the loopholes already discovered by journalists.
This was the first time the family wealth of Li Zhanshu encountered complete media inquiry, and the documents that could truly thoroughly investigate the new identity had already been formed within another financial institution at this time. The US Securities and Exchange Commission was then investigating the hiring practices of several international banks: whether banks gifted positions to the children of Chinese officials and state-owned enterprise executives in exchange for project licenses and business. Deutsche Bank was one of the investigated institutions and hired two external law firms to conduct internal compliance investigations.
Lawyers reviewed emails, recruitment forms, candidate evaluations, and interview records, recording item by item whether a candidate was qualified, who the recommender's parents were, and what the bank hoped to gain from this relationship. Ordinary job seekers were subjected to educational background, capability, and interview assessments, while the forms for applicants with powerful connections had an extra set of indicators: what kind of power their parents wielded and what business they could bring to the bank.
According to internal statistics by Süddeutsche Zeitung, 19 connection-based hires were linked to 103 business transactions, from which the bank generated close to $190 million in revenue. US Securities and Exchange Commission regulatory filings determined that Deutsche Bank provided positions and internships to government officials, state-owned enterprise executives, and relatives of clients in the Asia-Pacific region and Russia to influence them to assist the bank in obtaining or retaining business.
On August 22, 2009, Deutsche Bank agreed to pay the US government more than $16 million to settle this investigation. The $190 million revenue obtained by the bank explained why they were willing to lower their hiring thresholds. After all, the cost of a position was limited, while the value of listings, bond issuances, and state-owned enterprise business that high-ranking official families could bring was hundreds of times greater.
In 2019, Süddeutsche Zeitung obtained this batch of internal documents and contacted the New York Times, which had previously participated in the Panama Papers investigation; the two media outlets began cooperating. Li Qianxin's name was in this batch of documents, not just written in an easily duplicated Pinyin, but simultaneously written as Li Qianxin in Pinyin, along with her English name Norman, and traditional Chinese characters for Li Qianxin, with her identity description directly noting that she was the daughter of Li Zhanshu. This was ironclad evidence.
The documents also recorded a specific request, stating that Li Qianxin pushed the bank to hire her sister. Recruiters evaluated and concluded that this candidate did not meet the requirements of the corporate communications team, but she still received a job offer. This sister has no name in the existing public materials, and the corresponding case did not show Li Zhanshu himself stepping forward. Precisely because of this, this document better illustrates how the bank internally identified power. Recommendations did not need to be issued from the Politburo Standing Committee office; as long as the staff knew which family Li Qianxin represented, an ordinary recruitment would be factored into calculations for winning Chinese business.
This record shows that what the bank bought was not her sister's capabilities in communications, but the political value of the entire Li family. This bank dossier resolved the issue that the Hong Kong media had failed to solve back then, directly writing down that Li Qianxin was the daughter of Li Zhanshu.
However, The New York Times still had to answer another question: was Li Qianxin, whose name was written on the bank forms, indeed the same Li Qianxin at CITIC Capital, CCB International, and that Chua & Li company? Li is a rare surname, and with the English name Li Qianxin appearing alongside the Chinese name Li Qianxin, the probability of it being a coincidence was already very low. But when a major media outlet publishes a wealth investigation involving the top echelons of the CCP, a low probability is still not complete proof. The reporters needed an identification code that would not be affected by aliases or identical names. The Deutsche Bank files happened to leave behind such a string of numbers regarding Li Qianxin's identity, and The New York Times decided to independently verify it. Reporter Michael Forsythe later described how they had to push their 99.9% certainty to 100%. The reporters adopted an old method used to investigate the families of high-ranking Chinese officials: searching for the gravestones of ancestral tombs. In 2012, when David Barboza investigated the family wealth of Wen Jiabao, he used gravestones to cross-reference the family tree. In 2014, when Forsythe investigated the family of Zhou Yongkang, he found Zhou Yongkang's original name, Zhou Yuan, along with the names of his first wife and two sons from gravestones. Official Chinese resumes may omit family information, but rural ancestral tombs may have the names of several generations carved into stone. Some gravestones carve the names of the deceased in black and the names of living family members in red. For reporters investigating the families of high-ranking officials, a single stele sometimes revealed more than an entire set of official archives. New York Times reporter Huang Rui-li traveled to the mountainous area of western Hebei province to find the Li family's ancestral home in Nangou village. Li Zhanshu had already entered the top leadership of the CCP, and local relatives were unwilling to talk much. Huang Rui-li had no choice but to continue searching for the Li family gravestones. The gravestones were found; Li Zhanshu's siblings were all carved on them, and the spouses' names were quite complete. Traditional family trees sometimes omit married women, but this stele of the Li family preserved the female members. The reporters checked line by line, yet Li Qianxin was still not there. The reason was that the gravestone only recorded up to Li Zhanshu's generation and did not carve the generation below him; naturally, Li Qianxin's identity could not be found there, making it impossible to prove who she really was. Forsythe wrote in his review that the team had to handle other tasks, so this investigation had to be temporarily shelved. But they did not directly use the report by Mei-zhen Ren as direct evidence; this is also where the evidentiary standards of Hong Kong reports and The New York Times parted ways. If Li Qianxin's identity could not be independently established, then the missing crucial link between Cai Huabo's assets and Li Zhanshu would still remain. Two years later, inside the Deutsche Bank internal case files, not only were Li Qianxin's pinyin, English name, and Traditional Chinese characters shown, but also her Hong Kong identity card number. Only then was the confirmation of her identity considered complete. At this point, Li Zhanshu, Li Qianxin, Cai Huabo, and the massive assets in Hong Kong formed a complete chain of evidence. Only then was the proof process—which Hong Kong media failed to demonstrate in 2011—independently and fully supplemented by The New York Times reporters. Pinyin names and identical names do not prove they are the same person, and shared addresses can only prove a close relationship. Bank documents explicitly stating the father-daughter relationship still required proof that the "Norma" in the documents was indeed Li Qianxin from the Hong Kong financial circle. The ID card number was finally the most powerful supplementary evidence provided. Only after these four pieces of evidence were brought together could the identity chain be considered sealed.
Now let us look at Li Qianxin's operations in Hong Kong. In 2013, Li Qianxin used Century Joy Holdings to purchase a four-story seaside residence at No. 6 Stanley Beach Road in Hong Kong for HKD 15 million, at a time when she was only about thirty years old. The buyer in the land documents was naturally not Li Qianxin, but a company named Century Joy. In 2014, this company was registered in Hong Kong, with Li Qianxin as the sole director of the Hong Kong entity. Offshore companies concealed the underlying relationship between the property owner and the political family, but they did not cause the land transaction to disappear from Hong Kong's registration system. Century Joy was established in the British Virgin Islands and registered in Hong Kong in February 2014 as a registered non-Hong Kong company. The New York Times placed the residences purchased in Hong Kong by Li Qianxin, Xi Jinping's sister Qi Qiaoqiao, and Wang Yang's daughter Wang Xisha side by side for verification. The combined purchase price of the three properties exceeded HKD 51 million. The reason these three residences were placed in the same report was because the three paternal figures were all involved in determining the fate of Hong Kong. Li Zhanshu pushed for the National Security Law, Xi Jinping held supreme power, and Wang Yang was then in charge of the United Front and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) affairs. What the report revealed was not three independent luxury homes, but rather that the family members of those who make the political rules for Hong Kong were simultaneously using Hong Kong's property protection and offshore structures to allocate their assets.
This New York Times investigation was not published until August 2020. By this time, the Hong Kong national security law had been in effect for more than a month. The person who pushed for the passage of the law as the Chairman of the NPC Standing Committee was none other than Li Zhanshu. Just before the report was released, Century Joy had already terminated its business address in Hong Kong. This could be said to be yet another lightning-fast reaction from the Li family before the media exposure. The reason remains that before a report is published, the media may send inquiries to the parties involved for verification. The New York Times also performed this routine action, notifying the Li family in advance that the report was about to be published. On October 10, 2019, ten months before the report was published, a New York Times reporter contacted Li Qianxin via Facebook, asking if she was willing to respond. On October 11, Century Joy filed with the Hong Kong Companies Registry to terminate its business address in Hong Kong. Michael Forsythe later said this action was like the sudden dissolution of a listed company within a few hours. But in fact, this statement was not entirely accurate. To deregister a local company in Hong Kong, it must cease operations, settle debts, obtain a Notice of No Objection from the Inland Revenue Department, and then apply to the Companies Registry. It is impossible for a company to complete this entire procedure within a few hours of a reporter's inquiry. Century Joy did not go through the local company deregistration procedure; it was a British Virgin Islands company registered in Hong Kong as a non-Hong Kong company. For this type of company to cancel its Hong Kong business address, it can submit Form NN13. Can notifying the Companies Registry to prepare and submit this form really be completed within a day? Indeed it can. Therefore, what disappeared within hours was not the entity of this BVI company itself, but Century Joy's registered business address in Hong Kong. Public records can prove that the two actions occurred almost back-to-back. The reporter sent the inquiry on Facebook on October 10 Eastern Time, and on October 11 Hong Kong time, the company declared the termination of its Hong Kong business address. The Li family did not respond to The New York Times interview request, nor did the outside world find the source of the house-purchasing funds through this channel. However, the company's rapid action exposed their sensitivity to this topic.
So after these exposures from Next Magazine and The New York Times occurred one after another, were the positions of Li Zhanshu and his daughter affected? In July 2017, Next Magazine and the South China Morning Post had already linked Cai Huabo and Li Qianxin's joint company Stanley address to massive investments. Three months later, Li Zhanshu entered the Politburo Standing Committee of the 19th National Congress, ranking third. In March 2018, he was elected Chairman of the NPC Standing Committee. On October 14, 2019, the Deutsche Bank relationship hiring investigation report was published, not only writing Li Qianxin as Li Zhanshu's daughter, but also publicly exposing his promotion of the bank hiring her younger sister. Michael Forsythe later recalled that a few days after the report was published, Li Qianxin instead received a promotion. I re-checked the official resume published by China Construction Bank; the official website can only pinpoint appointments to the month. In November 2009, Li Qianxin served as Chairwoman and Executive Director of CCB International. The accurate phrasing is actually not a few days later, but the second month after the report was published. Licensed records of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission show that Li Qianxin entered CCB International in 2011 at the age of twenty-nine. Eight years later, at thirty-seven, she sat in the position of Chairwoman. The position of Chairwoman is different from ordinary investment managers; she entered the investment banking business platform of a large state-owned bank in Hong Kong, gaining access to state-owned enterprise financing, cross-border M&A fund establishment, and listing projects.
After publishing the report on the luxury mansion, Michael Forsythe continued digging through the industrial and commercial records of CCB International. He discovered that in 2010, a CCB International institution in Tianjin cooperated with Beijing Qinchuan Dadao Investment Co., Ltd. to establish the CCB Yunwei Investment Fund Management Company. At the time, the actual controller of Qinchuan Dadao pointed to Qi Qiaoqiao and her husband Deng Jiagui, the elder sister and brother-in-law of Xi Jinping. In 2009, CCB International arranged a private placement for Dalian Wanda Commercial Properties, and Qinchuan Dadao was one of the buyers. In 2010, the two sides jointly established another fund management company. Qinchuan Dadao was established in 2007, shortly after the 17th National Congress, when Xi Jinping had just entered the Politburo Standing Committee and his status as successor had already been clarified. CCB International first arranged the private placement for Wanda, making Qinchuan Dadao a buyer. A year later, the two sides jointly established CCB Yunwei. This was not a chance appearance on the shareholder list, but at least two consecutive collaborations. When these collaborations took place, Li Qianxin had not yet joined CCB International, and it cannot be written backward as her completing the transaction for the Qi family. What it can prove is that the investment bank where she rapidly rose later had long ago engaged in continuous capital cooperation with enterprises controlled by Xi Jinping's family, occupying an extremely important position in the power network. Li Qianxin entered CCB International at the age of 29 and became chairperson at 37. Successive exposures by Hong Kong media, Deutsche Bank, and The New York Times failed to hinder her completion of this promotion. Li Zhanshu's political career was similarly unaffected. As Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, he pushed forward the Hong Kong National Security Law. Following the implementation of the law, the Hong Kong police raided Apple Daily, arrested senior executives, and froze the company's assets. On June 24, 2021, Apple Daily was forced to cease publication. In August 2020, the Hong Kong police raided the headquarters of Next Digital on a large scale for the first time. In June 2021, the police took action again, arresting management personnel and freezing assets related to the newspaper's operations. For a newspaper that needed to pay printing wages and supplier fees every day, freezing funds alone was enough to cut off its publishing capacity. Apple Daily printed one million copies of its final issue, with large crowds of citizens queuing up in the early morning to buy them. Its cessation of publication was not due to a lack of readers, nor was it ordinary commercial bankruptcy; rather, it could no longer operate after its senior executives were arrested and its assets frozen. Hong Kong's earliest batch of media daring to publicly disclose the names of high-ranking officials' relatives thus lost its publishing platform.
Nine years ago, Apple Daily brought Li Qianxin's name, financial position, and political-business resume back to the public eye. Nine years later, Li Qianxin still managed CCB International, and Li Zhanshu remained at the core of supreme power. Yet Apple Daily had already lost the conditions to continue publishing. Existing evidence cannot frame the closure of Apple Daily as Li Zhanshu's personal retaliation for the 2012 report. The National Security Law targeted the entire political and media environment of Hong Kong. This episode could be completed in the first place because Hong Kong still had press freedom back then, leaving room for investigation. Today, such media outlets and journalists no longer exist in Hong Kong. Next Digital's Sudden Weekly ceased publication, Apple Daily was forced to close, Ren Meizhen left the South China Morning Post, and fewer and fewer foreign journalists are able to enter mainland China to investigate. Jimmy Lai lost his freedom starting in 2020, and later under the Hong Kong National Security Law, he was convicted of two counts of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and one count of conspiracy to publish seditious publications, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2026. We have no evidence to say whether this was a political purge, but the result is right there. The media that once continuously investigated China's power elites have vanished, and the founders of those media outlets remain in prison to this day. In May 2026, Trump visited Beijing and personally asked Xi Jinping to release Jimmy Lai. On the return flight, Trump told reporters that Xi Jinping said Jimmy Lai was a thorny issue for him. Trump subsequently acknowledged that the Chinese side's response was not positive, and he was not optimistic about Jimmy Lai. Why would a 78-year-old Hong Kong publisher sentenced to 20 years in prison become a thorny issue personally acknowledged by China's top leader? The answer lies not only in Jimmy Lai himself, but also in what the media he founded once did. The wealth story of Li Zhanshu's family is precisely a elegy sung for the press freedom left behind in that free port! Journalists could track relatives of high-ranking officials, investigate companies, check addresses, check assets, and publicly question them. Xi Jinping's most trusted Standing Committee member might have had reports retracted and journalists forced to leave, but the next media outlet could still continue digging. Today, Hong Kong's company archives may still be there, and land records have not disappeared. What truly vanished are the news organizations that connected these documents and then publicly stated their conclusions. Therefore, what this episode ultimately leaves behind is not just a luxury mansion worth 15 million, nor is it simply how many assets Li Zhanshu's daughter and son-in-law controlled. It also leaves behind a death record of Hong Kong's press freedom. Back then, journalists didn't even know what Li Zhanshu's daughter was called, yet they dared to start tracking from a single name for over a decade. The names and assets that have now been investigated remain in the archives, but it is hard to find another Hong Kong media outlet that dares to publish them again. The Li family's wealth has not become cleaner; it is just that Hong Kong has lost the people willing to keep asking. Well, that is all for today. If this episode is valuable to you, please give a thumbs up, hit the little bell, share, and subscribe to this channel. Friends who are able are welcome to join as members to support the development of our small channel. I am Yaojiang, who loves thinking and values logic. See you next time!