A top economist has joined the growing list of China’s elite to have disappeared from public life after criticizing Xi Jinping, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Zhu Hengpeng served as deputy director of the Institute of Economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) for around a decade.
CASS is a state research think tank that reports directly to China’s cabinet. Chen Daoyin, a former associate professor at Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, described it as a “body to formulate party ideology to support the leadership.”
According to the Journal, the 55-year-old disappeared shortly after remarking on China’s sluggish economy and criticizing Xi’s leadership in a private group on WeChat.
You make a fair point. Not all “disappearances” are made equal. Unfortunately some people on here (and many out there) love taking sides, and once they have, they find it difficult to process anything with a certain critical distance. Maybe it didn’t help that your original comment sounded very dismissive, as if any such claims in Western media are more likely to be BS than not. We don’t know that. At least I don’t know that. One could of course collect data on that, could be an interesting little project. I’m sure there are folks tracking disappearances and disappearance claims.