Du Ming | The Princelings Who Dominate China

Bureaucratic privilege has always been a fundamental problem in China. Ordinary people have their own ordinary lives, while the privileged class in the world is similar: relying on their fathers, mothers, and backgrounds. You think that those princes and princesses who crash supercars every now and then are just lucky by nature, but you don’t know that they are the privileged bloodline that inherits the power of their ancestors.
After the last emperor Puyi announced his abdication in 1912, China no longer had an emperor, but there was another emerging aristocratic class that grew with the Communist Party of China and still holds important positions today.
To understand how this privileged class was formed? Why is it still entrenched at the peak of China’s economy and politics today? We need to look back at the period of the civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. The measures to eliminate the Communist Party and the chaos of the war caused many Communist Party members to send their children to the Soviet Union or entrust them to relatives and friends to protect their safety.
These children who left their parents and suffered hardships were the first generation successors of the Red Dynasty. They are the bloodline that continues power and also the prototype of the future princelings. Later, the Party increasingly valued the descendants of these revolutionary figures and martyrs. These second and third generations of red families enjoyed advantages in education and career. In this way, when their parents withered, the important power they held had a transfer target.
These princeling members who inherited the power of the previous generation, with their educational environment, economic conditions, and political authority superior to ordinary people, gradually developed into a new aristocratic class in New China. They serve as important officials in various organizations, their bloodlines spread throughout the political and business circles. They are an important driving force in inciting the Cultural Revolution and are also familiar faces in the long-term cruel political arena. Up to now, there has even been a group of people who are accustomed to possessing wealth and are known to the world for their image of flaunting their wealth.