About a thousand princelings—sons and daughters of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party—gathered for a Chinese New Year celebration at a Beijing film studio on Feb. 3, the Chinese Internet portal Sina reported. But one significant official was a no show.
A princeling, Hu Muying, the daughter of a former president of the Chinese Regime’s mouthpiece Xinhua News Agency, spoke favorably about a fellow princeling—Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping.
Hu praised Xi for taking down “tigers” and “flies,” earning one victory after another in the anti-corruption campaign last year.
While “tiger” is a jargon for high-ranking CCP officials, an official in the lower party echelon is nicknamed a “fly.”
One important “big brother” was a no show at the gathering.
Big Brother
Zeng Qinghong, a former member of the Politburo Standing Committee (currently the seven men at the top the Party hierarchy) was a “big brother” to the princelings, a title going back to the 1980s, according to an article published in September 2014 by Boxun, a Chinese-language news website based outside of China.
His father, Zeng Hong, was a revolutionary and a former Minister of Interior. His mother, Deng Liujin, was once the head of a nursery in Yan'an, a city in the Shaanxi Province in northwest China. Also nicknamed “Mother Deng,” she raised up many princelings, according to Boxun.
In the 1980s, Zeng was already in his forties and at that time some of the later “popular” Chinese officials, Bo Xilai, Liu Yuan, Xi Jinping and others, were all in their twenties. According to Boxun, Zeng looked after his younger compatriots and they looked up to him as “big brother.”
When a Chinese official fails to show up at an important event—whether still in office or retired—it could have multiple political implications.
Zeng was reportedly arrested and put under house arrest in the city of Tianjin by the Chinese regime’s corruption busters in in July last year.
In January this year, Hong Kong’s Chengming Magazine reported that the Zeng family had amassed over 20 billion yuan ($3.2 billion) and hinted that Zeng could be the next “tiger” to be purged.
