Caixin’s investigation of CEFC and Chairman Ye Jianming
Posted: March 29, 2018 Filed under: Article summaries, China-Russia | Tags: CAIFC, Caixin, CEFC, Chairman Ye, Chen Qiutu, China CEFC Energy Company, China-Czech relations, China-Russia relations, Chinese journalism, Chinese journalists, Chinese media, Czech Republic, 陈秋途, 财新, Fujian Huaxin, Huaxin, Ji Tianqin, Rosneft, Sino-Czech relations, Su Weizhong, Ye Jianming, Zhang Qi, Zhou Lin, Zhuang Miaozhong, 华信, 华信能源有限公司, 叶简明, 季天琴 6 CommentsOn March 1, Caixin broke the news that Chairman Ye Jianming of the China CEFC Energy Co. has been detained by PRC authorities, and is under investigation for suspected criminal activity.
The company initially tried to refute this as “irresponsible” reporting, but investors opted to believe China’s leading investigative journalism outlet, and the company’s bonds dropped by 33% in a day.
But the party-state authorities’ ban on reporting about Chairman Ye and his empire of enterprise (documented here in 2017) remains in place, so Caixin‘s scoop was expunged from the PRC internet within hours.
The news was officially confirmed more than two weeks later, on March 19, when the Czech Republic sent a delegation to find out what was going on with its major source of foreign investment. The delegation was told that Chairman Ye, an advisor to Czech President Milos Zeman, was indeed “being investigated for a suspicion of breaking the law.”
CEFC was ranked 222nd in the Fortune 500 in 2017, and last year stunned the international energy industry by securing agreement to buy a $9 billion, 15% stake in Rosneft, Russia’s state oil giant.
Now the company’s future is as murky as its past.
Caixin reporter Ji Tianqin 季天琴 spent the most of 2017 interviewing CEFC executives, tracking down former associates of Ye, and tracing CEFC’s constellation of satellite companies through the financial records. And the crowning glory: she interviewed Ye himself twice, finding all manner of holes in the stories he told her.
Ji Tianqin is famous in Chinese journalism circles for her award-winning deep-dives addressing, among other things, Wang Lijun’s reign of terror in Chongqing. Considering the difficulty of being an investigative reporter in China today, she really ought to be famous outside China too.
This epic investigation into CEFC reveals how, through party and military connections, turnover figures massively inflated by fake trading, and relentless pursuit of international photo-ops and status symbols, Ye Jianming was able to sell domestic and foreign audiences a mostly vacuous narrative about his rising global energy and finance colossus.
Suffice to say, these revelations extend my record of getting some things right about CEFC, but not very many. I’ll leave that discussion for another post, as my purpose here is to urge China-watchers to invest the time in dipping into the 16,000-word translation below — and to please share thoughts on what it all means. I’d also welcome any translation corrections from people more familiar with financial and business terminology.
This is a spectacular work of Chinese investigative journalism that may contain some profound implications for understanding the PRC’s economy, politics and international relations.
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Ye Jianming under investigation, what fate will befall CEFC?
叶简明被调查中国华信命运如何?
Caixin Online
By Ji Tianqin
Pistons, PX, petroleum, politics: checking in with Chairman Ye Jianming
Posted: January 17, 2017 Filed under: PRC News Portals, State media | Tags: CAIFC, CEFC, Chen Qiutu, China CEFC Energy Company, China Energy Fund Committee, China-Czech relations, Czech Republic, 陈秋途, Fujian Huaxin, General Political Department Liaison Department, Huahang Oil, Huaxin, Jian'ou, Lai Changxing, PLA General Political Department, SAIFC, Sino-Czech relations, Ye Jianming, 华信, 华信能源有限公司, 叶简明, 叶建明, 叶主席 6 CommentsSince this blog last checked in with Ye Jianming in 2013, the youthful Chairman and his $40 billion CEFC (Huaxin) oil trading, storage and finance conglomerate have gone from strength to strength. It now ranks as the world’s 229th largest company by revenue.
CEFC originally attracted my attention due to Dai Xu‘s South China Sea warmongering under a “CEFC Strategic Analyst” title between 2011 and 2013. The company hasn’t been associating itself with that kind of militarism of late (at least not publicly), but its mystique has only intensified as various new information has come to light.
Here’s a brief rundown of what’s emerged since 2013:
- Chairman Ye Jianming is not Lt-Gen Ye Xuanning’s son, nor Marshal Ye Jianying’s grandson. Far from being a princeling — my own and others’ best guess as to his background — he was born into a family of boatmen in the Fujian hinterland.
- However, just as a blood relationship was finally disconfirmed, Chairman Ye turns out to be business partners with Ye Xuanning’s daughter in an entity bearing the PLA’s famous Carrie (凯利) brand.
- The company’s oil trading business originates with assets confiscated from Fujian smuggling kingpin Lai Changxing, which it acquired in 2006. Chinese financial media reporting indicates that before becoming an oil baron, Ye made pots of gold by purchasing a state-owned piston factory, and wholesaling the industrial chemical PX.
- Evidence of Chairman Ye’s involvement in the PLA General Political Department Liaison Department’s (GPD-LD) CAIFC system has continued to accumulate. Yet the GPD-LD’s fortunes appear to have been falling almost as fast as Chairman Ye’s have been rising.
- There are signs the rise of Chairman Ye may be related to the rise of Chairman Xi — from Fujian via Shanghai, to Beijing, and out onto the Belt and Road. CEFC/Huaxin laid the groundwork for Xi’s triumphant state visit to the Czech Republic in March 2016, establishing a “key link” in his signature foreign policy initiative.
For those who find this all as irresistably intriguing as i do, these points are detailed below, followed by a selection of aphorisms from the expanding corpus of Ye Jianming’s Thought, and a brief personal disclaimer.
The enigma of CEFC’s Chairman Ye
Posted: June 7, 2013 Filed under: PLA & PLAN | Tags: CAIFC, CEFC, Chairman Ye, China CEFC Energy Company, Chinese military, Daiwah, enemy work, external propaganda, General Political Department Liaison Department, Huaxin, Kissinger, liaison work, Long Tao, Nishan Forum, PLA General Political Department, Xing Yunming, Ye Fei, Ye Jianming, Ye Xuanning, Zhenrong, 华信能源有限公司, 叶简明, 叶选宁, 叶主席 16 CommentsUPDATE JANUARY 2017: Lots more information about Chairman Ye has come to light, including confirmation that he is not Ye Jianying’s grandson (but he is in business with Marshal Ye’s granddaughter). Read the latest update here first.
UPDATE APRIL 2016: The following odyssey through the business and ideological world of CEFC, an apparent platform of the Liaison Department of the PLA General Political Department (GPD-LD), was co-written with John Garnaut. Based on new information received, I now believe it’s unlikely that Chairman Ye Jianming is a grandson of Marshal Ye Jianying. Interestingly, there may be a connection with Marshal Ye’s family by marriage, which could be confirmed in coming months or years. The evidence of the young Chairman’s connection with the GPD-LD, however, remains strong, and has been anecdotally supported by people in a position to know. Thus, the new information doesn’t substantially alter the story below, just our theory on who exactly the Chairman’s father may be.*
Read on if you dare…
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The enigma of CEFC’s Chairman Ye
By Andrew Chubb & John Garnaut
Senior Colonel Dai Xu, of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, apologised profusely for running late as he lowered his tiny frame into a plastic chair.