person:wen jiabao

Leaked Records Reveal Offshore Holdings of China’s Elite

▻http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/216-global-taxes/52567-leaked-records-reveal-offshore-holdings-of-chinas-elite.html

Close relatives of China’s top leaders have held secretive offshore companies in tax havens that helped shroud the Communist Party elite’s wealth, a leaked cache of documents reveals. The confidential files include details of a real estate company co-owned by current President Xi Jinping’s brother-in-law and British Virgin Islands companies set up by former Premier Wen Jiabao’s son and also by his son-in-law.

http://www.globalpolicy.org/images/images/republicofoffshore_homepage_withtext.jpg

January 22, 2014 | ICIJ

Nearly 22,000 offshore clients with addresses in mainland China and Hong Kong appear in the files obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Among them are some of China’s most powerful men and women — including at least 15 of China’s richest, members of the National People’s Congress and executives from state-owned companies entangled in corruption scandals.

PricewaterhouseCoopers, UBS and other Western banks and accounting firms play a key role as middlemen in helping Chinese clients set up trusts and companies in the British Virgin Islands, Samoa and other offshore centers usually associated with hidden wealth, the records show. For instance, Swiss financial giant Credit Suisse helped Wen Jiabao’s son create his BVI company while his father was leading the country.

#chine #économie #paradis_fiscaux #criinalité_financière

Beijing’s westward pivot will make the Gulf a critical ally
▻http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/beijings-westward-pivot-will-make-the-gulf-a-critical-ally

Where does the Arabian Gulf fit in China’s emerging new diplomacy? Based on the recent flurry of diplomatic activities involving the Gulf and China (Chinese premier Wen Jiabao visited three Gulf states in January last year and the speaker of the Federal National Council of the UAE, Mohammed Al Murr, met last week in Beijing the head of the Chinese parliament), the Gulf remains an essential part of China’s resource-focused diplomacy.
China, already the world’s largest importer of crude oil, depends on the Gulf for 44 per cent of its oil imports.

Given the worsening air-pollution in China, Beijing must also find the Gulf’s abundant natural gas supply attractive. To be sure, China has massive deposits of shale gas, but the geological challenges, lack of infrastructure, scarcity of water and uncertain property rights make it unlikely that China will start tapping into its shale gas as a source of energy any time soon.
In the meantime, any sensible Chinese official in Beijing knows that he must get his hands on as much clean natural gas as possible. Compared with Russian gas, which will not start shipping until 2018, gas from the Gulf can be imported immediately.

To some, Beijing may even have a long-term military design on the Arabian Gulf. With its growing military might, China will naturally want to protect its own energy sources. However, it is unlikely that Beijing would risk confronting the Americans by deploying its navy to the Gulf (at the moment, it simply does not have a blue water navy capable of being deployed far away from China). The Chinese are experienced free-riders. As long as the United States is keeping the international shipping lanes open for them, China needs not waste its own money duplicating the task.

Wen Jiabao, la maman et le butin - Libération
►http://www.liberation.fr/monde/2012/10/28/wen-jiabao-la-maman-et-le-butin_856570

Selon le « New York Times », la famille du Premier ministre chinois posséderait 2,1 milliards d’euros.

#chine #corruption

Dans le chaudron politique chinois | Martine Bulard (Les blogs du Diplo)
►http://blog.mondediplo.net/2012-03-22-Dans-le-chaudron-politique-chinois

Une croissance qui s’essouffle, des mouvements sociaux qui prolifèrent, un parti qui se divise au grand jour... Commencé sous le signe de la stabilité, le règne du président Hu Jintao et du premier ministre Wen Jiabao, qui quitteront leurs fonctions en octobre prochain, lors du XVIIIe congrès du Parti communiste chinois (PCC) [1], risque de se terminer dans l’agitation, pas forcément contrôlée. Toutes proportions gardées, il faut remonter à 1989, à la veille des événements de la place Tiananmen, pour trouver un tel cocktail, même si les questions du pouvoir d’achat étaient alors plus fortes et les exigences d’ouverture politique plus prégnantes. (...) Source : Les blogs du Diplo