Iron Condor Resigns as Chairman, Criticized for Wasting Public Resources

The Chinese Communist Party’s Association of Literature and Art Chairman has changed again, with Tie Ning, who has been in charge of the association for over 18 years, stepping down and being succeeded by Zhang Hongsen, who once controlled China’s film censorship. The CCP Association of Literature and Art has been criticized by insiders as a waste of national resources.

According to the news from the “China Writers’ Website,” on March 20th, Zhang Hongsen, who is the Secretary of the Party Group, Vice Chairman, and Secretary of the Secretariat of the CCP Association of Literature and Art, has now also taken on the role of Chairman of the association, with Tie Ning no longer holding the position of Chairman due to “work needs.”

Both Tie Ning and Zhang Hongsen are members of the 20th Central Committee of the CCP. Since 1949, the past Chairmen of the CCP Association of Literature and Art include Mao Dun (first to third terms), Ba Jin (fourth to sixth terms), Tie Ning (seventh to tenth terms, with the tenth term not completed), and now Zhang Hongsen.

Public records show that Zhang Hongsen was born in August 1964 in Zibo, Shandong province. He is a writer and screenwriter, previously serving as Deputy Director and then Director of the Film Administration of the former State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television for 15 years. He later served as Deputy Director of the National Radio and Television Administration, member of the Standing Committee of the Hunan Provincial Committee, and Minister of Propaganda. In 2021, Zhang Hongsen became the Secretary of the Party Group, Vice Chairman, and Secretary of the Secretariat of the CCP Association of Literature and Art, before now assuming the position of Chairman.

During Zhang Hongsen’s tenure as Director of the Film Administration of the former State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television, the CCP’s “Film Industry Promotion Law” was implemented in March 2017. At that time, Zhang Hongsen introduced details about the film review process to state media reporters, stating, “We have a principle that we don’t compromise on guiding issues and principles.”

Born in September 1957, Tie Ning, who is now over 67 years old, is the third Chairman of the CCP Association of Literature and Art following Mao Dun and Ba Jin, with a tenure exceeding 18 years. She was a candidate member of the 16th and 17th Central Committees, and a member of the 18th, 19th, and 20th Central Committees.

On March 10, 2023, Tie Ning was appointed Vice Chairperson of the National People’s Congress of the CCP, promoted to a deputy national level. On September 27, 2024, she also served as a special envoy of CCP leader Xi Jinping to attend the power transfer ceremony of the Mexican President in Mexico City.

Originally surnamed Qu, Tie Ning grew up in Baoding, Hebei province, and had worked as a sent-down youth in her early years. In the 1980s, while working as an editor for the Baoding Regional Writers Association’s publication “Huashan,” Tie Ning visited Zhengding County, where she met Xi Jinping, who was the Secretary of the Zhengding County Party Committee at that time. It is said that she and Xi Jinping and his wife have been friends ever since.

After the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident, Tie Ning was the first provincial Writers Association Chairman (then Chairman of the Hebei Writers Association) to publicly support the use of force to suppress the protests. In October 1996, she became the Chairman of the Hebei Writers Association, and by the end of that year, she became the Vice Chairman of the CCP Writers Association. In November 2006, she became the Chairman of the CCP Writers Association and in 2016, she became the Chairman of the CCP Association of Literature and Art for the third time, concurrently serving as the Chairman of the CCP Writers Association. In December 2021, she became the Chairman of the CCP Association of Literature and Art for the fourth time, and also retained her position as the Chairman of the CCP Writers Association. Xi Jinping’s wife, Peng Liyuan, started serving as the Vice Chairman of the writers’ association in November 2011 and was re-elected for two consecutive terms.

The CCP Writers Association and the Association of Literature and Art are known as mass organizations, uniquely functioning official institutions in socialist countries. The power structure of the Association of Literature and Art is modeled after the former Soviet Union, but it has never been reformed through various institutional reforms and remains a unit of ministerial rank, just like party and government agencies, all funded by the state budget.

Chinese writer Yan Yanwen had earlier exposed the massive waste of national resources by the CCP Association of Literature and Art. As a group organization, the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the association enjoy ministerial and deputy ministerial treatment, equipped with luxury cars like Audi, drivers, secretaries, luxury welfare housing, and even nanny fees… compared to leading officials of state departments, their treatment standards are even higher. Below the CCP Association Chairman are various levels of officials benefiting from fiscal allocations, ranging from bureau-level, division-level, deputy division-level… across the Writers Associations and Artists’ Associations in all provinces and cities, with conservative estimates suggesting tens of thousands of public servants maintained by the state, with the annual fiscal allocation expenditure of hundreds of millions of yuan. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

The article revealed that at that time, there were more than a hundred officials and staff of the CCP Association enjoying the treatment of government officials. In 2011, the National Audit Office announced that the annual national fiscal allocation to the CCP Association of Literature and Art was 238 million yuan, with the association’s expenditure reaching 105 million. It is worth noting that the staggering figures provided in the article were all from before 2012.

During Bo Xilai’s “Sing Red, Strike Black” campaign in Chongqing in 2010, Tie Ning brought a group from the Association of Literature and Art to Chongqing for a meeting, where they were received by Bo and discussed cooperation, promoting Bo’s image. Official media reported that at that time, despite the obvious drought disaster in Chongqing, the writers from the association were enjoying the high-level treatment of the Presidential Suite and Audi car services. Yan Yanwen angrily criticized the Association in a blog post, stating that “a banquet devoured donations from thousands of primary school students.”

The CCP Association of Literature and Art also controls a significant literary public funding, the Chinese Literary Fund Foundation.