By John Vibes
Amid stock market panic in China, many of the country’s most prominent billionaires are disappearing without a trace. This week, Zhou Chengjian, the chairman of the clothing company Metersbonwe became the most recent wealthy Chinese businessperson to go missing. Metersbonwe said in a statement on Thursday that it would be suspending its shares on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and that they were unaware of Chengjian’s whereabouts.
According to Bloomberg, as many as 36 companies reported executives missing from January to September.
Just a few weeks ago, Chang Xiaobing, the CEO of the state-owned telecoms giant China Telecom, resigned and then went missing. There were rumors that Xiaobing was taken by police or government agents in a widening corruption investigation that is touching every corner of the Chinese economy.
Back in November, Yim Fung, chairman and CEO of Guotai Junan International Holdings went missing, sending the company’s stock down 12%. Also in November, Chen Jun and Yan Jianlin, two senior executives of Citic Securities vanished without a trace.
In October, Zhang Yun, the president of the Agricultural Bank of China, also disappeared, however, it was reported that he was detained as a part of a corruption investigation.
Earlier this year, in June, Poon Ho Man, the CEO of China Aircraft Leasing Group went on vacation and never came back. He resigned while he was gone and has not been contacted since. Xu Jun, chairman of the department-store operator Ningbo Zhongbai is another Chinese executive who disappeared this year. It was confirmed by Xinhua news agency was being investigated for corruption at the time of his disappearance.
Dozens of other wealthy executives throughout China have disappeared in the past year, many of them under different circumstances. It is apparent that there is a growing corruption investigation in which many of these executives are implicated. However, only a small number of them have been officially announced as being in government custody. With that being the case, it is likely that some of the executives have fled and are in hiding expecting that they will soon be jailed. It is also possible that the government is sweeping them up in the middle of the night, as secret police in dictatorships have been known to do throughout history.
Also, it is unclear whether these corruption investigations are witch hunts, designed to place blame for the declining economy, or if it is a legitimate effort to keep bankers and executives accountable for their actions. There is no doubt that the government was involved in whatever corruption may have been taking place, but as always they are in charge of the investigation so it is unlikely that any government agents or employees will be implicated.
John Vibes is an author and researcher who organizes a number of large events including the Free Your Mind Conference. He also has a publishing company where he offers a censorship free platform for both fiction and non-fiction writers. You can contact him and stay connected to his work at his Facebook page. You can purchase his books, or get your own book published at his website www.JohnVibes.com.
This needs to happen in America and the rest of the world. Hunt them down and take everything they own and put them in government ghetto housing.
I agree, they belong in jail.
They are dead…
Yeh, but first make the kuntz build the ghetto housing themselves.
Catch A CEO by the toe and hang him. I have no use for those people. One chewed me out years ago. If I had A gun he would be dead by now.
Maybe we could rendition the Banksters to China.
They’ve gone to their secret underground hideaways to escape justice, and to escape the chaos that may soon be erupting above ground?
That would be my guess.
Indeed. It must be a good country to hide in a crowd, or bribe your way out of.
Being shot in the head… you think they escaped? You serious?
Like they took them out and had them shot
BonnieLou, it’s fairly well known that many wealthy Chinese have economic escape plans. Many own property on south Pacific islands, or in New Zealand and Australia. No doubt, some are being investigated. No doubt, some see the impending financial problems and are simply bugging out. If you had the resources, wouldn’t you…?
Will the Communist Regime hunt them down?
When people disappear in China, it’s because the regime killed them sir.
Communist dictatorship + Secret Police + Controlled Media + Ongoing Investigations + Disappearing Executives + Crashing Capitalist/Command Economy = ???
Nah, they were killed by the regime. Geez.. what do you think happens in China when the regime is in trouble? People pay with their lives.
IMO…In it’s purist form the CCPR doesn’t tolerate or have too much patience with financial largess, how much they have been compromised since the 1970s only those experts in foreign and Chinese issues probably really know…we peons are only fed information from a Western point of view ….but with all the empty buildings China now possesses these people on the run should have plenty of hiding spots.
The wealth disparity of China’s parliament compared to the average citizen is far greater than it is in the US or west. The party leaders (going back to the family lines of the communist revolutionaries) and their offspring, the “Princelings”, are the foundation of the China’s plutocracy. Is has been estimated that these billionaires have skimmed and transferred up to $4 Trillion out of China’s economy parking the loot in offshore safe havens. zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-21/chinas-epic-offshore-wealth-revealed-how-chinese-oligarchs-quietly-parked-4-trillion Russia is worse yet with the same pattern of the offspring of the revolutionaries reigning as top plutocrats with greater wealth disparity than any other nation, analysts putting it into a category of its own.
The book Hawaii documents how the initial few missionary families that came to the islands ended up with all the loot; business, property, and power. Nothing new. The Human Race to win.
Good example. Iron Law of Politics. Funny how most don’t know the historical pattern and go along with suggestions of centralizing power further to stamp out the corruption. It’s in the genes..
I hate money. I can’;t stand the stuff at all. All those evil rich fat cats own it. I will take Jesus christ any day over A buck.
Michael Savage, in his radio program, often quotes an old saying in Hawaii about those missionaries…
“They came to do good, and they did very well indeed.”
I like that one. But fret not. The Lord sees what’s in the hearts of men.
Darwinian evolution characterizes life as a genetic struggle for dominance which squares with isolated families taking over whole economies, this is the narrowest form of racism, ones own family is a genetically distinct “race” opposed to the other outlying families or “races”.
One could almost measure the relative freedom of nations as the ratio of the number of ruling families between any two nations, for example in the USA its about 230 families, in China its about 33 families so the USA is 230/33 more free than China and China is only 33/230ths as free as the USA. For Mexico its about 12 families, for North Korea its 1 family, so Mexico is 12 times as free as North Korea and North Korea is 1/12th as free as Mexico
This is also exactly how social animals behave, so much for human self determination, it looks like our genetic instincts rule us, not the other way around.
Seeing as how China’s imploding financially this makes sense that the billionaires would all go into hiding. Look at Bernie Madoff and what he did to the USA. Is it too hard to imagine that these Chinese businessmen would do the same as Bernie did? I am sure that they pulled off the same Ponzi schemes in China and are fleeing for their lives as they know China will execute them and not just put them in prison.
They are not hiding, they are being killed by the regime… Chinese regime is panicking and seizing people’s money.
Is communist anti corruption corrupt? Who makes the rules? Who does the judging? Is there a rule of law or is it willy nilly get your enemies whatever way you can?
He who has the gold makes the rules.
The regime killed them, this is China.
Trump warned a couple of months ago that the financial markets are in a bubble…and it won’t be pretty.
guess I don’t understand a communist billionaire.
nuntheless – the China banking system is the same as ours – owned by the gold collar scum crowd.
They know their government will be looking for scapegoats.
A much more likely scenario is that the government is complicit with these businessmen and is sequestering them to prevent them from making public statements about that complicity during the upcoming irrepressible investigation
A much more likely scenario is that the government is complicit with
these businessmen and is sequestering them to prevent them from making
public statements about that complicity during the upcoming
irrepressible investigation triggered by the collapse. As usual the
given question precludes the most likely answer. The question “is this
the result of of the governments strategy to uncover the truth?” or “is
this the result of flight from the governments strategy to uncover the
truth?” precludes what is most likely the proper question, “is this the
governments attempt to hide the truth”?, as long as we keep the first
questions in focus we can not focus on the last question..question
framing is at the forefront of all political manipulation
If a business Executive has the power to implicate high Communist Party officers of complicity he does not have long to live. The Chinese execute something over 10,000 people per year for all manner of crimes.
your right, we may not see these people again
Off course not, they are dead.
Paging John Galt…
A strong Communist revival is in the works! China will purge its elite and distribute their wealth from the bottom up as Mao has dictated. After The purge expect an economic rebound and another Chinese Empire born. China has 5 % growth as it is and that will never stop. Expect the BRICS to attack the U.S. Dollar, mainly due to the dishonesty of repeated “paper printing sessions” by the Feds. As it is, Canadians doing the same jobs as U.S. counterparts are only making 70 cents on the dollar in pay and cannot afford to support Feds Quantitative Easings anymore. Trade between the two countries will grind to a halt, and Justin Trudeau , Prime Minister of Canada see the folly now in the TPP and its U.S. Dollar base, seeks Free Trade with China as we speak. Will Canadians be able to buy Chinese Built Buicks, Fords, VW’s Chery, in Yuan and very soon? I hope so, for the sake of the Canadian People, beaten so bad by their former amer-republican CRAP Prime Minister Harper and his insistence to tie Canadians by the balls to the u.S. economic system and Western Canadian Oil Sands products, Quantitative Easings and all. Most Canadian retirees cannot do so as successive Quantitative easings by the U.S. Feds have devalued their Canadian Dollar savings now by a full 30% making a “Made in China” car selling for 50% less in Yuan look very attractive. Recent and massive inflation on all U.S. grocery products have left Canadians in their dust and searching for cheap rototillers and gardening plans for the spring. The economic “Crash’ is most certainly upon us in Canada, and we were sorely prepared for it.