A Chinese property mogul and arch critic of President Xi Jinping jailed for corruption after calling the president a clown.
Ren Zhiqiang, the former chairman of state-owned real estate group Huayuan, received a sentence of 18 years for corruption, bribery and embezzlement of public funds.
He was also handed a 4.2million yuan (£484,485) fine, according to Beijing No. 2 Intermediate Court.
The court verdict, released earlier today, said the 69-year-old ‘voluntarily and truthfully confessed all his crimes’ and would not appeal the court’s decision.
Rights campaigners accuse President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party of using corruption charges to silence dissent.
Ren, who was once among the ruling Communist Party’s inner circle, disappeared from the public eye in March shortly after penning an essay that lambasted Xi’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The piece has since been scrubbed from China’s internet, which regularly censors content that challenges the authorities, but was shared widely elsewhere online.
‘This epidemic has revealed the fact that the Party and government officials only care about protecting their own interests, and the monarch only cares about protecting their interests and core position,’ Ren wrote, without naming Xi.
He added: ‘Standing there was not an emperor showing off his new clothes, but a clown stripped of clothes who insisted on being an emperor.’
Ren, who was once among the ruling Communist Party’s inner circle, disappeared from the public eye in March shortly after penning an essay that lambasted Xi’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The piece has since been scrubbed from China’s internet, which regularly censors content that challenges the authorities, but was shared widely elsewhere online.
‘This epidemic has revealed the fact that the Party and government officials only care about protecting their own interests, and the monarch only cares about protecting their interests and core position,’ Ren wrote, without naming Xi.
He added: ‘Standing there was not an emperor showing off his new clothes, but a clown stripped of clothes who insisted on being an emperor.’
Ren’s influential blog on the Twitter-like Weibo platform attracted millions of followers before his account was closed by authorities in 2016 after he repeatedly called for greater freedom of the press.
Beijing has stepped up its crackdown on civil society since Xi took power in 2012, tightening restrictions on freedom of speech and detaining hundreds of activists and lawyers.
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