Right, there's a strong line among all the really publically disappeared people which is that they are all pretty likely to be deeply linked into the entire corrupt machinations of the system.
Like with Zhao Wei. You think you get to be a billionaire from just being a good actor?
But even the worst kind of people deserve due process and like... some notion of rule of law. I think conflating "this person is being treated inhumanely" and "this person is a good person" are often conflated though, making it too easy to derail conversations about these kinds of cases.
I don't know much about this person's case. It could be that there's legitimate reasons for this person's wife to be in jail. But this sort of bargaining of a person's freedom for this kind of thing is really nasty. It's not something unique to China (there are lots of nasty US plea deals that involve essentially trading your freedom for someone else's), but honestly pretty unique when it comes to people that are clearly extremely wealthy.
It will be very interesting if it turns out to be a stunt by the author and publisher. Xi won't care about the publishing of a book of a former vice president, actually, the publish of the book is probably good for him. My speculations anyway. I would love to read the book
- perfect publicity for the new book about to be published
- the wife isn't as innocent but part of the system
- the couple isn't that innocent but was part of a corrupted system
Can't tell wich one is correct, including the original version