**HNA Founder Xu Jiayin Arrested: What High Officials Will he Implicate?**
Founder of HNA Group, Xu Jiayin, was arrested in September 2023, and speculation has been rife about which high-ranking officials and elites he will implicate. Following the recent downfall of Jiang Chaoliang, former Secretary of the Hubei Provincial Communist Party Committee, attention has turned to his “collaborative relationship” with Xu Jiayin. A senior commentator has written an article introducing other former and current high-ranking officials with ambiguous connections to Xu Jiayin, including current Minister of State Security Chen Yixin.
Mainland Chinese media previously mentioned fallen officials connected to Xu Jiayin’s case, including former Secretary of the Guizhou Provincial Communist Party Committee Sun Zhigang and former Governor of Liaoning Province Tang Yijun. The latest addition to this list is Jiang Chaoliang, former Secretary of the Hubei Provincial Communist Party Committee.
Radio Free Asia columnist Gao Xin wrote on March 3 that Jiang Chaoliang, during his three-year tenure as Secretary of the Hubei Provincial Communist Party Committee, had at least three “intimate interactions” with Xu Jiayin. On the other hand, Chen Yixin, who spent just over a year and two months as Secretary of the Wuhan Municipal Party Committee, had at least two enthusiastic invitations for Xu Jiayin to visit Wuhan.
According to the article, Jiang Chaoliang’s first meeting with Xu Jiayin took place on June 6, 2017. A day prior, Xu Jiayin had already met with Chen Yixin, then Deputy Secretary of the Hubei Provincial Communist Party Committee and Secretary of the Wuhan Municipal Party Committee, as well as the Mayor Wan Yong. When Jiang Chaoliang and Xu Jiayin met, neither Chen Yixin nor Wan Yong were present. Based on the sequence of these meetings, it appears that Xu Jiayin’s visit to Wuhan was initiated by the Wuhan Municipal Committee and government represented by Chen Yixin.
The second meeting between Jiang Chaoliang and Xu Jiayin in Wuhan occurred on October 26, 2018. Local media reported that Xu Jiayin visited Wuhan at least twice in 2018, the first time being in mid-March. During this visit, Xu Jiayin was “invited back to Wuhan by the Wuhan Municipal Party Secretary Chen Yixin”.
Gao Xin mentioned in his article that another high-ranking official who had close dealings with Xu Jiayin was one of Xi Jinping’s representatives, Chen Min’er. On September 26, 2016, then Secretary of the Guizhou Provincial Communist Party Committee and Director of the Provincial People’s Congress Standing Committee, Chen Min’er, met with Xu Jiayin accompanied by then Governor Sun Zhigang. However, news of the encounters between Chen Min’er and Xu Jiayin has since been deleted.
The article also references a former national-level high-ranking official, Yu Zhengsheng. Yu Zhengsheng once served as Secretary of the Hubei Provincial Communist Party Committee (2001-2007). Xu Jiayin was a member of the 11th (2008-2013) and subsequent two sessions of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (2013-2018). In March 2013, Xu Jiayin was promoted from a Committee member to a Standing Committee member, and Yu Zhengsheng was the Chairman of the National Committee of the CPPCC. Official media published an article titled “Yu Zhengsheng this Year: Personally Intervening for Xu Jiayin and Guizhou”, indicating that Yu Zhengsheng played a personal role in discussions with Xu Jiayin on poverty alleviation.
Tang Yijun, former Governor of Liaoning Province, may have been the first high official implicated in Xu Jiayin’s case. Tang Yijun was removed from his position as Chairman of the Jiangxi Provincial Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference on April 2 last year. On June 15, 2019, the Shenyang Municipal Government and HNA Group signed a strategic cooperation agreement in Shenyang, where then Deputy Secretary of the Liaoning Provincial Communist Party Committee and Governor Tang Yijun met Xu Jiayin and attended the signing ceremony together.
Overseas commentator Wang Gong once wrote that news from Beijing suggested that Chen Yixin and Tang Yijun were key figures in the Zhejiang faction. Both had been educated in Lishui; in the 1980s, Chen Yixin worked in the Lishui Municipal Party Committee office in Zhejiang, while Tang Yijun worked at the Party School of the Lishui Municipal Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. The two were friends in the same city; during the 1990s, they worked together in the Zhejiang Province Committee office for several years. When Tang Yijun held the position in the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry’s official website became a platform to promote Chen Yixin, then Secretary-General of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, filled with a wealth of information on Chen Yixin’s activities and speeches.
The HNA projects in Wuhan, Hubei, have mostly been left unfinished. Among them, the HNA Technology Tourism City in Wuhan, the first project of HNA Tourism in Hubei with investments totaling billions of yuan, remains half-complete and was dubbed as the “largest unfinished project in Central China”.
Gao Xin’s article also mentions another current high-ranking official who had close ties with Xu Jiayin – Chen Min’er. In concluding, the article discusses Xu Jiayin’s elevations in political circles and the various high-ranking officials he had interactions with, shedding light on the complex web of relationships with Xu Jiayin intertwined with politics and business in China.