Interpol tragicomedy

China and the Case of the Interpol Chief
The New York Times

China has yet to give any details of the corruption charges against Meng Hongwei, the president of Interpol, who disappeared on a visit home and was later said to have been arrested. 

Whatever the charges are, they are almost certainly not the real reason for his fate. 

In China, the law is what the Communist Party says it is — more precisely, what Xi Jinping says it is. 

And when an official of Meng’s global stature is nabbed, it’s a political decision — even if, coincidentally, he was corrupt, as is often the case in China.
Meng understood the rules of that game. 

He had been a vice minister of public security in a police state and had played a role in many operations, including Operation Fox Hunt, which tried to bring Chinese officials and businesspeople suspected of corruption back from abroad. 

His former boss, Zhou Yongkang, was imprisoned for life on corruption charges in 2015. 

Meng’s last WhatsApp message to his wife was an emoji of a knife, which she understood to mean he was in danger.
Interpol has asked Beijing for an explanation for Meng’s detention but has taken no further action. 

The agency issued a statement on Sunday that it had accepted his resignation as president “with immediate effect” and named a replacement.

Whatever else he was, Meng was the president of Interpol, a venerable international organization based in France that facilitates cooperation among police forces from its 192 member countries. 

The position of president is largely ceremonial — a secretary general, currently Jürgen Stock of Germany, runs day-to-day operations. 

But the selection of a Chinese official for the post was a major feather in China’s cap, proudly hailed by Xi a year ago as evidence that China “abided by international rules.”
The crude arrest of Meng proclaims the opposite. 

China’s behavior puts it more closely in a league with Russia, another nation whose authoritarian leader is convinced that his country is due global respect and deference by virtue of its wealth and might, and not its actions. 

Tellingly, both China and Russia have brazenly tried to use Interpol to pursue political foes. 

China put out a “red notice,” in effect a wanted alert, for Dolkun Isa, a self-exiled activist for the rights of China’s beleaguered Uighur minority. 

Russia tried to use Interpol to catch Bill Browder, a hedge-fund manager turned anti-Vladimir Putin campaigner, among other political gadflies. 

In these cases, Interpol has properly refused to cooperate.
It is possible that Meng’s failure to pursue the Isa warrant fed Xi’s anger. 

According to The Economist, a Ministry of Public Security statement condemning Meng’s alleged wrongdoings also stressed the need for “absolute loyalty” and for “resolute support” for the country’s leader.
What Meng did to join the lengthening list of officials purged by Xi may never be fully known outside the Communist hierarchy. 

What is known, and deeply troubling, is how brazenly China is prepared to wage its internal power struggles without any regard for procedures, appearances or international norms.

Interpol Tragicomedy

Interpol Chief, Detained by China, Resigns Under ‘Supervision’ of Party Watchdog

By Edward Wong and Alissa J. Rubin

Grace Meng, the wife of the missing Interpol president, Meng Hongwei, speaking to reporters on Sunday in Lyon, France, during a news conference in which she did not want her face shown.

In a startling move that could set back the country’s efforts to expand its global presence, the Chinese Communist Party announced late Sunday that the missing president of Interpol, Meng Hongwei, was under investigation on “suspicion of violating the law” and was “under the supervision” of an anticorruption watchdog tied to the party.
The announcement that Meng, a Chinese citizen, was being detained was posted online by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the party’s watchdog against graft and political disloyalty, on Sunday night.
A few hours later, Interpol said it had received Meng’s resignation “with immediate effect.”

The statement of his detention and his subsequent stepping down came a day after Interpol demanded answers from the Chinese government on the whereabouts of Meng, who was reported missing on Thursday.
The detention of Meng, 64, is an audacious step by the party, even by the standards of the increasingly authoritarian system under the leadership of Xi Jinping. 

China has sought legitimacy and a leadership role in international organizations, and Meng’s appointment in November 2016 as the president of Interpol, the first Chinese head of the global policing agency, was seen by many as a significant step in that direction. 

His detention undermines that campaign.
Meng’s appointment “was considered quite an achievement for China and a sign of its international presence and growing influence,” said Julian Ku, a professor at Hofstra University’s Maurice A. Deane School of Law, who has studied China’s relationship with international law.
While China may have had its eye on placing its citizens in other top posts at prominent global organizations, “the fact that Meng was ‘disappeared’ without any notice to Interpol will undermine this Chinese global outreach effort,” Mr. Ku said. 

“It is hard to imagine another international organization feeling comfortable placing a Chinese national in charge without feeling nervous that this might happen.”
The announcement of Meng’s detention came hours after his wife, Grace, told reporters in Lyon, France, that before her husband had vanished on a trip to China, he had sent her a phone message with an emoji of a knife.
She interpreted the knife image to mean “he is in danger,” she said in a brief statement to reporters on Sunday in Lyon, where the two were living and where Interpol is headquartered.
Ms. Meng gave her statement at a hotel, keeping her back to reporters so that her face would not be captured on camera, a precaution that she said was for security reasons for herself and her children.
She said she had received the message with the knife image shortly after Meng arrived in China. 

It came just four minutes after she received a message from him saying, “Wait for my call,” she said.
She has not heard from him since. 

She reported his disappearance to the French police on Oct. 4. 

A French police investigation is now underway, with the authorities saying that he had boarded a plane and arrived in China, but that his subsequent whereabouts was unknown.
In addition to serving as president of the international crime-fighting body, Meng is also a vice minister in the Chinese Ministry of Public Security.

China says Meng Hongwei, Interpol’s president, is under investigation for unspecified legal violations.

The central commission can detain party officials for months or years while carrying out an investigation. 

The commission often concludes an investigation by stripping an official of party membership, stating the official’s violations of party regulations and referring the official to the justice system for criminal prosecution.
Since Xi took power as president of China, the commission has gone on a wide-ranging anticorruption campaign that has touched every level of the party.
His detention means that internal party dynamics supersede any concern from the party about international legitimacy or transparency.
The party’s moves in this case “suggest that the domestic considerations outweighed the international ones,” said Mr. Ku, the law professor. 

“This has always been true for China, but perhaps not so obviously true as in this case.”
It is unclear what led to Meng’s apparent downfall — a power struggle within the party or an actual case of corruption that officials deemed to be beyond the pale.
There have been investigations of prominent figures in the anticorruption campaign. 

The most notable has been that of Zhou Yongkang, a former member of the elite Politburo Standing Committee and top security official. 

Many analysts of Chinese politics say Xi viewed Zhou as a rival and used the anticorruption campaign to imprison him.
“What I find most interesting about Meng Hongwei’s detention,” said Elizabeth Economy, director of Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, “is the continued parade of senior officials being arrested.”
With officials appointed by Xi himself now being caught up in the six-year anticorruption drive, “it raises the question of whether Xi Jinping simply has a very thin bench of clean officials from whom to choose, whether these officials were adequately vetted before being promoted or whether the anticorruption campaign is simply failing to deter officials from continued corrupt behaviors,” Ms. Economy said. 

“Whatever the reason, it doesn’t bode well for the party’s ability, ultimately, to police itself.”
Margaret Lewis, a professor of Chinese and Taiwanese law at Seton Hall University Law School, said Meng’s detention sends a signal that “no one is safe,” and it could give other Chinese officials posted abroad “pause when considering their own travel plans.”
Meng was last seen leaving Interpol headquarters in Lyon on Sept. 29 for his trip to China. 

His wife and children had moved with him to Lyon after his appointment.
Under the terms of Interpol’s Constitution, the acting senior vice president, Kim Jong-yang of South Korea, becomes acting president.
At her news conference on Sunday, Ms. Meng said she had decided to speak publicly because she felt it was her responsibility to do so. 

Her step was extraordinary: Family members of Chinese officials in trouble with the party or government usually do not make a plea for international help.
“From now on, I have gone from sorrow and fear to the pursuit of truth, justice and responsibility toward history,” she said. 

“For the husband whom I deeply love, for my young children, for the people of my motherland, for all the wives and children’s husbands and fathers to no longer disappear.”

Charting China's great purge under Xi

BBC News

Not since the days of Mao Zedong (right) has a campaign on the scale of Xi's been seen

Since becoming China's leader in 2012, Xi Jinping has overseen a vast and ruthless anti-corruption drive in which more than a million officials have been disciplined.
A BBC study has found that more than 170 ministers and deputy minister-level officials have been sacked and many jailed under Xi, accused of charges such as corruption, misconduct and violation of party discipline.
It has been described by some as a massive internal purge of opponents, on a scale not seen since the days of Mao Zedong, in whose Cultural Revolution many top officials were purged.

How extensive is the campaign?
The most noticeable departure from tradition has been the breaking with many unwritten party conventions since Mao's time. 

The prosecution of so many national-level officials has been notable -- in recent decades prominent figures would usually have been quietly retired.
But in the last five years, 35 members (full and alternate) of the Chinese Communist Party's powerful Central Committee have been disciplined. 

That is as many as in all the years between 1949 and 2012.

Who has been targeted?
Based on official data, a staggering 1.34 million officials at high and low levels -- the so-called "tigers and flies" -- have been brought down by corruption and disciplinary charges during Xi's first five years in office.
No walk of life has been spared -- those felled range from village chiefs and factory managers to government ministers and generals.
The great purge goes right to the very top of government -- the biggest scalp so far was once the third most senior leader in China, Zhou Yongkang. 

He had been in charge of the vast internal security apparatus until he retired.
Sun Zhengcai, who was sacked as Chongqing party secretary, was only the fourth sitting politburo member ever to be expelled from the Communist Party. 

Promoted before Xi Jinping took office, Sun, 54, was the politburo's youngest member and had been tipped for the very top.

Zhou Yongkang is the most senior official felled so far. 

Until he retired in 2012 he was the third most powerful politician in China. 

In 2015 he was jailed for life for bribery, abuse of power and disclosing state secrets.
Abruptly removed from his post in July, Sun Zhengcai is the most senior serving official to be caught by Xi's purge. 

Only the fourth sitting politburo member to ever be expelled from the Party.
Xu Caihou was among highest-ranking military until he retired in 2013. 

He was investigated as part of a "cash for ranks" probe and ultimately expelled from the party and prosecuted. 

He died of cancer in 2015.
Guo Boxiong served alongside Xu. 

In July 2016 he became the highest-ranking military official prosecuted since the end of the revolution in 1949. 

He was sentenced to life in prison for bribery.
Ling Jihua was a trusted adviser of Hu Jintao but was swiftly demoted under Xi. 

After a scandal that began when his son died "in a state of undress" in a Ferrari crash, he was jailed for life for bribery in 2016.
Nearly 70% of the party's ruling Central Committee members will be replaced with new faces at the current congress although in the majority of cases alleged corruption or other transgressions will not be the reason -- age will be.
An unwritten party rule currently sets the retirement age at 65 for Central Committee members.

Has the army been spared?
No area has been more radically restructured under Xi than the military, which he swiftly set about comprehensively reorganising and modernising.
More than 60 generals have been investigated and sacked in the drive to introduce a Western-style joint command and promote young officers to top positions.
Even as the delegates started to gather in Beijing for the current party congress, the pace of the campaign showed no signs of slowing down. 

Two top generals, Fang Fenghui and Zhang Yang, disappeared from public view as recently as last month, and a series of new high-level investigations have been announced.

What is Xi's goal?
The five-yearly congress in Beijing is expected to see Xi remain as party chief and bring in a new leadership team, helping to entrench his already considerable power.
If things go to plan for Xi, he should be able to get many of his loyalists into key positions. 

Since he took office a number of his allies have been promoted. 

Here are some of the biggest gainers.
Li Zhanshu was party chief in a county neighbouring Xi's early in their careers. 

In 2015 he visited Moscow as Xi's "special representative". 

Has played a leading role in maintaining strong relations with Russia.
Chen Min'er is one of the "New Zhijiang Army", the group of now senior CPC figures who worked under Xi when he was party secretary in Zhejiang. 

Chen replaced the disgraced Sun Zhengcai in Chongqing.
Another of the so-called "New Zhijiang Army" is Cai Qi. 

Before being summoned to the capital his popular blog had more than 10m social media followers.
Said to be Xi's top foreign policy aide, Wang Huning has been labelled "China's Kissinger" by a leading South Korean newspaper. 

He also advised former presidents Hu and Jiang.
Xi described his key economic adviser Liu He as "very important to me" when introducing him to President Obama's National Security Adviser in 2013. 

Liu has an MA in public administration from Harvard.
Who ends up in the party's Politburo Standing Committee, China's top decision-making body which currently has seven seats, will show exactly how powerful he has become. 

Its members -- and those of the 25-seat Politburo -- will be revealed on 25 October once the congress ends.
But analysts say Xi, along with anti-corruption chief Wang Qishan, a key ally, has used the clean-up campaign to help shape who China's new leaders will be.
The country's Communist Party has for decades ruled by consensus, but analysts say Xi is rewriting party rules and concentrating power in his own hands.
Critics accuse him of encouraging a cult of personality. 

They point to the fact that most of the top officials who have been disciplined have been supporters of his opponents, or former presidents Jiang Zemin or Hu Jintao.
Xi's supporters say the anti-corruption drive is needed to restore the ruling party's credibility as the president pursues his dream of a more prosperous and powerful China which will soon overtake the US as the world's largest economy.

Rogue Nation

Greater Corruption in China? A Billionaire Has Evidence
By Michael Forsythe
Guo Wengui has criticized the effectiveness of the Communist Party’s anti-corruption campaign.
It happens in Russia — occasionally.
An oligarch, made fabulously wealthy through the privatization of state assets, breaks ranks, becoming a critic of President Vladimir V. Putin.
China was different.
Its growing ranks of billionaires often owe their fortunes to the good graces of the Communist Party and its leading families.
But the firsthand knowledge that the country’s tycoons might have of the complex shareholding ties that serve to enrich the political elite had stayed secret.
That changed this year.
In two rambling interviews with a New York-based media company lasting more than four hours, Guo Wengui, a real estate magnate, described what he said was a ferocious struggle that culminated two years ago in the collapse of a business deal pitting him against relatives of a retired top Communist Party official, He Guoqiang.
Since then, Mr. Guo has lived abroad, and is a member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
In going public with his charges, Mr. Guo demonstrated just how dangerous a loose-lipped billionaire can be to China’s Communist Party.
The party still strives to cultivate an image of selfless service to the nation, with state-run news media repeatedly emphasizing that no official is immune to Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive, now in its fifth year.
If Mr. Guo is to be believed, Xi, when he assumed leadership of the Communist Party in November 2012, may have faced a far more serious corruption problem than has been publicly disclosed, touching not only the departing chief of the country’s security forces but perhaps also the top official in charge of rooting out graft in the party’s own ranks, Mr. He.
Both were members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the elite body that wields supreme power in China.
“If you are Xi Jinping and you are deciding to go after corruption, can you take them on all at once?” asked Andrew Wedeman, a professor of political science at Georgia State University who studies corruption in Chinese politics.

Zhou Yongkang, the former head of the security forces, in court in 2015.
The former head of the security forces, Zhou Yongkang, was prosecuted on graft charges and is now serving a life sentence in prison. 

But there is no report that He or members of his family have been prosecuted. 

To Mr. Guo, that demonstrates the weakness of the corruption crackdown: Among the elite, the campaign touches only those who are already on the losing side of factional power struggles.
Mr. Guo explained in a March 8 videotaped interview with Mirror Media Group, a Chinese-language news company based on Long Island, how He’s son He Jintao was the “boss” of the second-largest shareholder in Founder Securities, a company in which Mr. Guo was seeking to acquire a large stake. 

He Jintao concealed his role through a proxy, according to Mr. Guo.
That deal soured when Mr. Guo tried, without success, to name directors to Founder Securities’ board and became locked in a dispute with his former business partner, Li You, who was the chief executive of the brokerage’s state-owned parent, according to a report by Caixin, a Chinese news company.
Mr. Guo, using turns of phrase that wouldn’t be out of place in “The Godfather” or “The Sopranos,” said He Jintao was working against him.
“To be honest, if I could publish evidence about you, He Jintao, I promise that in 24 hours, 10 million people will take to the streets and will eat you alive,” Mr. Guo told Mirror Media.
Mr. Guo, who also goes by the name Miles Kwok, did not offer any proof of wrongdoing by the He family. 

But for all his bluster, there is some documentation to support his assertion that the family had a financial stake in Founder Securities.
In 2015, New York Times reporters working in Beijing, Hong Kong and the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu mapped out the financial network of He Guoqiang’s family, examining shareholding records and verifying relationships by interviewing a member of the family. 

Those documents and interviews show that the family did appear to control, indirectly through a series of shell companies, a stake in Founder Securities, which has a joint venture in China with Credit Suisse, the Swiss bank.
He Guoqiang, left, with Xi Jinping, center, and Jia Qinglin, a top official, during the Communist Party Congress in 2012.

Founder Securities is one of China’s biggest brokerages, with a market capitalization of more than $10 billion. 

Unusual for a securities company, it is based in the south-central province of Hunan, He Guoqiang’s native province. 

Its second-biggest shareholder at the time of its 2011 initial public offering was a company called Lide Technology Development.
Until at least mid-2014, Chinese company records show, Lide was controlled by companies tied to the He family. 

A member of the family identified one of the ultimate shareholders, Zhang Xiuqin, as He Jintao’s maternal aunt. 

Lide owns stakes in property, medical and financial companies across China worth more than $600 million, corporate records show.
Credit Suisse Founder, the joint venture, was begun in 2008, the first full year that He Guoqiang was on the Politburo Standing Committee, and it allowed the Swiss bank entry, through the venture, to China’s domestic investment banking market. 

Founder Securities retained majority control, with a two-thirds stake.
According to Bloomberg data, the venture underwrote one of its first initial public offerings in August 2010 — of a company called Hangzhou Shunwang Technology. 

One of this company’s directors was Liao Ying, whose name and biography on the company’s prospectus match those of He Jintao’s wife.
Moreover, at the time of the I.P.O., Hangzhou Shunwang’s third-biggest shareholder, owning almost 10 percent, was a company controlled by the He family and ultimately owned by two of its business associates, according to a review of Chinese corporate records. 

Credit Suisse Founder was also an adviser for Founder Securities’ own I.P.O. in 2011.
A spokeswoman for Credit Suisse in Hong Kong had no comment. 

Founder Securities and Hangzhou Shunwang did not respond to questions submitted via fax and email. 

He Jintao did not respond to a request for an interview made through his Beijing-based company, Womei Investment.
With a flourish of bluster and in the third person, Mr. Guo expressed just how heated the conflict was with the younger Mr. He, telling him, via a video interview viewed by hundreds of thousands of people, that more disclosures could come should their business interests clash again.
“Guo Wengui is from the grass roots, born as a farmer and not afraid of death,” Mr. Guo said. 

“If you do it again, then I would have no choice and will fire a cannon to you. I don’t want to war against you, but He Jintao, you had better watch carefully what you say and what you do, including with your wealth — you’ll be responsible for it.”

Peking opera

Disappearance of Chinese Billionaire Alarms Financial Sector
By Yifan Xie in Shanghai and Josh Chin in Beijing

The Tomorrow Group building in Beijing. The group’s founder is missing and stocks connected to his business empire were battered on Friday. 

The disappearance of Chinese billionaire Xiao Jianhua, one of several prominent financial figures who have gone missing since China’s 2015 stock-market crash, is sending shivers through China’s financial sector.
The uncertainty surrounding Xiao’s whereabouts sent stocks related to his business tanking Friday as trading resumed after the Lunar New Year holiday. 

Trading volume on the Shanghai market dropped to its lowest level in more than a year amid tepid sentiment further hurt by liquidity concerns.
Speculation over Xiao’s absence erupted earlier this week with unconfirmed reports that he had been abducted in Hong Kong by Chinese law-enforcement agents. 

Hong Kong police said on Wednesday they had asked mainland authorities for more information after determining Xiao, a Hong Kong resident, had crossed into China on Jan. 27.
The news came a week after Xu Xiang, a star Chinese fund manager was sentenced to 5 1/2 years in prison for stock manipulation, the highest-profile investor convicted after a summer of stock-market turmoil in 2015 wiped out a year’s worth of gains and roiled global markets.
“In a weak market, investors are very scared about any kind of uncertainty,” said Shen Zhengyang, an analyst at Northeast Securities, saying that Xiao’s sway over the market is “on a much larger scale than Xu Xiang’s.”
Xiao, who claims he models his approach on U.S. stock wizard Warren Buffett, is the founder of Tomorrow Holding, a sprawling web of investments from insurance and real estate to beet farming. After graduating from the Peking University in 1990 while still a teenager, Xiao dazzled the market by investing in unknown brokerage firms, banks and insurers just before they took off.
Now in his mid-40s, Xiao was No. 32 on the Hurun Report’s latest list of China’s wealthiest individuals with an estimated personal fortune of $6 billion.
In a brief statement late Thursday, Tomorrow Holding said the company and its subsidiaries were “operating normally.” 

It didn’t offer any news about Xiao’s status and the statement didn’t prevent shares of firms in which it has significant stakes from plummeting on Friday.
Xishui Strong Year Co. Ltd Inner Mongolia, a cement producer and insurance provider, and Baotou Huazi Industry Co., which produces sugar and electronic parts, both dropped the 10% maximum. Baotou Tomorrow Technology Co. Ltd., a chemical firm, was down 5%, the cap for shares identified as at risk for delisting.
At an aging building in a technology park in northwestern Beijing, identified as Tomorrow Holding’s address in regulatory filings, guards refused to let a reporter move past the lobby Friday afternoon.
A notice posted at the entrance of the building said Tomorrow Holding “has not received any notice requiring it to cooperate with a legal investigation.” 

It threatened legal action against media and others who spread rumors about the company.
Earlier in the week, the company posted, then deleted, two statements attributed to Xiao saying the China-born financier has a Canadian passport and was receiving medical treatment abroad. 

The second statement, in which Xiao proclaimed his loyalty to the Communist Party, also appeared as a full-page ad in Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper on Wednesday.
A number of high-profile Chinese businessmen have gone missing for various lengths of time since Xi Jinping’s pledge to sweep away corruption four years ago.
Several property and energy moguls disappeared in 2013 in connection with an investigation into powerful former security czar Zhou Yongkang, who was sentenced to life in prison for corruption in 2015.
After the 2015 stock-market rout, authorities detained around a dozen securities-industry executives, accusing some of “malicious short selling,” including Xu Xiang, the founder of Shanghai-based Zexi Investment Co.
He and two others pleaded guilty in December to using hundreds of trading accounts to manipulate the stocks of dozens of companies. 

He hasn’t spoken publicly since being arrested in 2015.
Guo Guangchang, chairman of financial conglomerate Fosun International, briefly disappeared in late 2015. 

He hasn’t given details of his absence beyond saying he was assisting authorities with an unspecified investigation.
Heather Hsu, a private-equity fund manager at Shanghai Beaconbridge Investment said that even though little is known about why Xiao went missing, his disappearance recalls Mr. Guo’s.
“His absence can’t be simply a business matter,” Ms. Hsu said
Tomorrow Holding has been in the limelight before. 

In June 2008, the online edition of People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, questioned the company’s role in the listing of Pacific Securities. 

The small, Yunnan-based broker went public on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in 2007, bypassing the long queue for initial public offerings despite suffering two consecutive years of losses. 

Pacific Securities was controlled by Tomorrow Holding prior to its listing.
In response to a 2014 report by the New York Times that Xiao has helped broker deals for members of China’s political elite, including relatives of Xi Jinping, Tomorrow Holding denied that the financier’s wealth stemmed from political connections.
“Almost all of China’s top-tier investors are politically influential,” said Brock Silvers, managing director at Kaiyuan Capital, a Shanghai investment advisory firm. 

Compared with Fosun’s Guo, who was the top decision maker behind its many deals, Xiao has kept a low profile, he said.
Calls to Xishui Strong, Baotou Tomorrow Technology, and Baotou Huazi went unanswered Friday. The website of Tomorrow Holding wasn’t accessible. 

The firm didn’t respond to calls and emails seeking comments.

The enemy for China is within

In spite of all of the experience of the Chinese people over 2,000 years, they have not come up with a system of government which can deal with the effective and peaceful transfer of power. 

Real Vision TV

For one of Hong Kong’s leading political commentators, with an insider’s perspective of China’s history, it’s not the currency, capital flight or a peasant uprising that’s keeping him awake at night.
The “real Black Swan” that China has to face up to is the enemy within — in the upper echelons of the military and government — as well as its inability to transfer power peacefully and the threat of a long and bitter civil war.
TL Tsim has studied the Chinese political scene since the 1980s, with a background in journalism, including the South China Morning Post and Hong Kong Economic Journal before starting his own consultancy. 

In an interview with Real Vision TV he said the greatest misconception among its people is that Chinese dynasties are super stable structures that last a long time.

Long civil wars follow Chinese dynasties
That’s not really the case, he argued, because none of them lasted longer than the Habsburgs in Austria, who ruled for over 800 years. 

The last one in China – the Qing dynasty -- lasted 260 years, which is much shorter in comparison. People also underestimate the length of the civil wars between Chinese dynasties, which can last for 150 years, he adds.
“That is something most Chinese people do not understand. And it has a bearing on the way we go forward,” Tsim said. 

“In spite of all of the learning, and the experience of the Chinese people over 2,000 years, they have not come up with a system of government which can deal with the effective and peaceful transfer of power. 

In the West, you do it through the ballot box. So Brexit is Brexit. You accept it. 

But in China, the fight goes on.”

Considering the collapse of the Chinese communist party
The shortest dynasty of any size and power in Chinese history was the Yuan dynasty, which lasted just less than 100 years, Tsim said. 

“This government, this administration, the Chinese Communist Party, came to power in 1949. And so it's been around for 67 years."
“We don't know when something like the Russian collapse, the implosion of the former Soviet Union might take place. 

We don't know whether this is going to be the Yugoslavian model, when the country broke up into six or seven parts. 

So to speculate on the timing of it is something I do not do.
“But it is not idle to speculate on how this is going to happen. 

The most likely scenario is a power struggle over-spilling into a coup d'etat and then over-spilling into civil war. 

That would be the trajectory.”

Internal party conflict sparked Soviet breakup
The real concern for Tsim – and he said for the Chinese leaders as well– is that if you look at the breakup of the former Soviet Union, the problem was internal, arising out of disagreements within the center of the party itself.
“And this is what they need to guard against,” Tsim said. 

“This is why you've seen the arrest of Bo Xilai, the arrest of Zhou Yongkang, who was the former security czar, a member of the Politburo Standing Committee. 

Then you have the arrests of the two generals, General Xu and General Guo. 

Those are the players that could have toppled a government because they are strong. 

They have the backing of armed forces behind them”

The Chinese model is bitter long standing civil war
What was ultimately a peaceful disintegration of the former USSR, is unlikely to happen in China because there will be a fight, Tsim said. 

“They would not have sat down and talked about it and then take the decision to simply allow this to happen. 

This is not the Chinese model.
“And sadly, I think we're not going to see a Yugoslavian model either, because there they did have a civil war. 

But the civil war-- the war was small, in terms of size and scale, and didn't last very long. 

That is not the Chinese model either. 

The Chinese model is a bitter, long-standing civil war -- very destructive, very divisive. 

This is the real black swan.”

Chinese vendetta

Godfather Xi: Behind China's Anti-Graft Campaign, A Drive To Crush Rivals

By ANTHONY KUHN

China's ruling Communist Party is pledging tighter discipline than ever for its 88 million members and no let up in a four-year anti-corruption campaign that has seen more than 1 million officials investigated for graft.
The party's self-supervision, since it doesn't allow much independent oversight, is the focus of the party's most important meeting of the year this week. 

The four-day conclave will lay the groundwork for an expected second and final term for Xi Jinping, following a congress of party delegates next fall.
The anti-corruption drive has boosted Xi's popularity among the graft-weary populace. 

It has also cast a chill over some sectors of the economy — luxury goods, restaurants — that benefited from the wheeling and dealing of businessmen and officials.
But Xi's administration has admitted that deeper structural reforms will be needed to address the root causes of corruption, and those measures have not yet taken shape. 

Corruption remains rampant in daily life, such as the state-dominated health and education sectors, where citizens have to pay bribes to get access to top schools and hospitals.

Eliminating factions
Absent from the discussion is the fact that much of the anti-corruption campaign so far has been aimed at eliminating covert factions operating inside the party.
"These issues could, in the future, be one of regime survival," warns Boston University political scientist Joe Fewsmith.
He argues that this is how Chinese Communist Party leaders rise to power — by eliminating rival factions. 

Mao Zedong did it some seven decades ago, and Xi appears to be doing it now.
He says these winner-take-all feuds break out "because you don't really have a mechanism to sort out who legitimately rules."
It's not a subject China's leaders like to talk about in public. 

The phrase and the idea of factions is taboo to a party that proclaims its own unity and "altruism". Official literature refers to "gangs" and "cliques," not factions.
China's anti-corruption campaign "has nothing to do with a power struggle," Xi insisted in a speech in Seattle last year. 

"In this case, there is no House of Cards."
Xi was referring, of course, to the TV drama in which actor Kevin Spacey plays Frank Underwood, a conniving politician with an arsenal of dirty tricks.
Xi may deny that there's a power struggle, but experts and state media often describe the anti-graft drive as a fierce political struggle.
Zhuang Deshui, who follows the anti-corruption issue at Beijing University, says that high-ranking officials netted in the anti-graft drive did indeed pocket large chunks of the nation's wealth.
But "more importantly," he says, "they were trying to seize control of state power."

High-profile figures go down
The highest of these officials to fall so far are ex-security czar Zhou Yongkang, and ex-presidential aide Ling Jihua. 

Both were convicted on criminal corruption charges, not political offenses.
"There are many details of this that we don't know," adds Fewsmith, "but they are clearly being accused here by Xi of engaging in factional activity to contest some part of the party's leadership."
Both men commanded large factions which controlled parts of the government and owed personal allegiance to these two men, not the party or the state.
Zhou installed confidantes throughout the security apparatus, and in Sichuan province, where he worked as an official.
"This is why Xi Jinping had to rebuild the security system" after taking office in 2012, notes Zhuang Deshui.
State media have reported that anti-graft officials were still mopping up the remains of these two factions within the bureaucracy this year.
In an indication of the importance of factions as a target of the anti-graft drive, Zhuang estimates that nearly half of the roughly 160 officials at the Cabinet level or above netted so far in the campaign had ties to these two factions.

A long history
Factions are not allowed in the Communist Party, but they have nevertheless been a prominent feature of Chinese politics in the modern age, and for centuries before that.
For example, statesman and essayist Ouyang Xiu counseled the Renzong Emperor of the Song Dynasty that political factions have existed all along, and what's important is distinguishing between good and bad ones.
"In general," Ouyang wrote in the year 1044 AD, "gentlemen form factions on the basis of shared moral principles. Men of lesser character form them on the basis of profit."
In recent decades, some have advocated legalizing factions within the Communist Party. 

After all, they argue, party members should be allowed to group themselves based on ideas and policies. 

But unfortunately, says Beijing University's Zhuang Deshui, that's not the case.
"It would be better if these factions had common goals and ideologies," he says. 

"What concerns us is that they're only after power for its own sake."
But experts say it would be an oversimplification to say that Xi Jinping is only interested in knocking out rivals and consolidating power.
Joe Fewsmith of Boston University adds that Xi wants to change his party's political culture, restoring the discipline and loyalty he believes the party commanded under Mao Zedong, and other "revolutionaries", including Xi's own father, Xi Zhongxun. 

He served in a number of positions after the revolution, including vice premier, and head of the Communist Party's propaganda department.
Xi "does worry a lot about who's up and down. But, yes, he also worries about the party as an institution, and he's determined to revive those elements of the party which he associates with his father and the 1950s," says Fewsmith.
But Ren Jianming, who studies anti-corruption issues at the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, says that besides strict party discipline, another approach is also needed: "To develop democracy within the party, allowing everyone to express their opinions and prescriptions through formal channels."
However, official news reports about this week's meeting make no mention of such an approach.
And with Xi's main rival factions quashed, it's not clear who the next big targets of the anti-corruption campaign will be.