República Popular da China - A China vai dominar o mundo?

[Fernando Silva]

Ditadura chinesa está prendendo empresários aos montes e se apropriando de seus bens, supostamente para combater a corrupção, mas sem processo legal nem julgamento. Vários se suicidaram. A economia estagnou ou piorou, com muitas firmas tendo prejuízo.

China’s missing bosses - The sinister disappearance of China’s bosses

Detentions, public shaming and suicides intensify the country’s corporate gloom

Oct 8th 2025

Until recently Yu Faxin was best known as a leading scientist and entrepreneur, specialising in advanced semiconductors for military applications. But on September 22nd he made headlines for another reason. His company, Shanghai-listed Great Microwave Technology, disclosed that Mr Yu had been taken away by China’s anti-corruption agency. Mr Yu is in liuzhi, an extra-judicial form of detention in which increasing numbers of Chinese businessmen are being snared.

The country’s entrepreneurs must contend with a lengthening list of worries. Foremost is the economy, which has never fully recovered from the pandemic. Consumer sentiment is tepid at best; overproduction and ruthless competition are rife. Retail sales have shrivelled. The number of lossmaking industrial firms has been hovering at a record high.

But a further set of concerns is growing in prominence. As the economic outlook darkens, China’s institutional shortcomings are making the business elite even more miserable. Official investigations into company leaders are on the rise. So are court rulings that limit their freedom to travel around the country. A spate of suicides among bosses this year is widely seen as evidence of intensifying pressure.

Liuzhi detentions are perhaps the clearest source of unease. When the system was created in 2018 it was aimed mainly at Communist Party members and government officials, part of the anti-corruption crackdown begun by Xi Jinping, China’s supreme leader, five years earlier. It is now frequently directed at businesspeople too.

The system runs parallel to normal policing. Detentions do not require court approval. Detainees are denied the standard services of lawyers. Changes to regulations in June allow agents to hold people for up to eight months, to reset the clock if a new crime is suspected and to interrogate prisoners endlessly. Cells typically have no windows, lights are always on and detainees are often supervised 24 hours a day, even when using the toilet.

This year bosses at listed companies have been vanishing into this grim system at a staggering rate: The Economist counted 39 such cases by the end of September, or about one a week, in stock-exchange filings. That already exceeds last year’s record tally. But it is just a fraction of the broader picture. Most corporate liuzhi targets work for unlisted companies, which are not obliged to explain to investors why their chief executives have disappeared.

Total detentions, including those of both officials and businesspeople, soared by nearly 50% in 2024, to around 38,000, according to statements by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the party body authorised to carry them out (see chart 1). The corporate side of the crackdown appears to be extensive. The CCDI has said it took some form of disciplinary action (including liuzhi) against more than 60,000 people in the pharmaceutical sector and 17,000 in finance last year.

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But the dominant mood among entrepreneurs has instead stayed gloomy. On September 28th it was revealed that Wang Jianlin, a property tycoon who was once China’s richest man, had been added to the debtors’ blacklist because of a contractual dispute. This ban was lifted a day later but not without igniting a discussion on the dire situation facing some leading business figures. Mr Yu’s detention has had a similar effect. If senior military scientists can be swept into liuzhi, no one is out of the corruption agency’s reach.

The suicides have made matters darker still. Between April and July at least five prominent bosses leapt to their deaths from high buildings, leading to anguished public discussion about the burden on entrepreneurs. The suicide of Wang Linpeng caused particular shock. The founder of a successful department-store chain, Wang was once the richest man in Hubei, his home province. In April he was put into liuzhi. He was freed in late July, but kept on a watch list. His suicide, days after his release, is just one of the few “that float to the surface”, says the lawyer. “There are many more that no one knows about.”

https://www.economist.com/business/2025 ... nas-bosses