Money Matters | Crocs, traitors and scarecrows abound but lieutenants are scarce
Compared to the deep bench that makes up the elite families’ consigliere, the list of candidates to enforce Xi Jinping’s vision of financial integrity is short
“Crocodiles”, “traitors” and “scarecrows” are the new creatures lurking in China’s corridors of power, the financial one in particular .
President Xi Jinping has reportedly lashed out against these three types during the Communist Party’s sixth plenary meeting last October. He didn’t elaborate, but any veteran observer of Chinese business or politics will know who they are.
- The “crocodiles”are the top families of China’s political elites, and their consigliere making the big bucks in the financial market via manipulation and inside information.
- The “traitors” are those cadres and bureaucrats planted over the past decades among the country’s regulatory agencies, bank and brokerages by elite families to facilitate their businesses, and tip them off when things go awry.
- The “scarecrows” are the regulators who have turned a blind eye to malfeasance, whether due to sheer incompetence or fear.
Xi has vowed to remove them all, for the sake of the country’s financial stability and integrity, according to a report by Oriental News.
Whether Xi really said that can never be proven. Yet, what we have been seeing since January is clearly a consolidation of his control over the financial markets, if not a declaration of war against the financial kinfolks.
To understand all this, we need to go back to China’s stock market crash in the summer of 2015, which significantly set back Xi’s economic plan, and more importantly, weakened his credibility.
It may be a bit far-fetched to suggest that the crash was orchestrated to undermine Xi’s authority during its zenith, following his bold crackdown on corruption and the successful launch of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
