HASPreviously, Wang Hongquan congratulated himself for not going out without at least 10 million yuan (1.3 million euros) worth of jewellery and luxury goods. Since May, he has not appeared in public at all. The influencer, barely in his thirties, boasted of having seven apartments in a very high-end residence in eastern Beijing, La Rivière des étoiles, without living in the largest (991 square metres) which lacks a little light for his taste.
Her career, which consisted of excessively flaunting her wealth in short videos to her more than 4 million followers on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, is on the decline. The woman sometimes dubbed the “Chinese Kim Kardashian” has disappeared from the networks since the government launched one of its “campaigns” in the spring, a unique but fierce and highly visible period of political action, this time against internet celebrities who are too extravagant.
Like him, a wealthy influencer who, from her 2,000-square-meter mansion and gardens, had amassed 2 million subscribers, Grande Sœur Ormeaux (named after this particularly expensive seafood loved by the richest Chinese), is no longer visible online. Those who promote “extravagance and waste” EITHER “displaying wealth and worshipping money” They no longer have their place online, explained an official note on the networks before the summer. It is rather about promoting “Rational and healthy consumption values”.
That China has become richer in recent decades is an undeniable reality, but the motto of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1986, “let some people get rich and then help others get rich”first used to explain the opening up of coastal regions, lived. The Communist Party is now less concerned about extreme poverty, which it considers essentially overcome, than about inequalities, which are particularly visible. They are politically sensitive and, since an economic meeting chaired by Party Secretary Xi Jinping in August 2021, the watchword is now “common prosperity”.
“Common prosperity”
As soon as he came to power in November 2012, Xi understood that some people’s wealth was a cause for discontent. By attacking corruption, as well as being able to locate his men, he found a favourable response among the common people, who suffered from it. Although it is still possible to see the occasional pink Rolls-Royce or a gold Lamborghini, most of China’s richest people have realised that it is wiser to keep a low profile or have moved in, like foreigners Pan Shiyi and Zhang Xin, billionaires whose real estate projects have redefined Beijing’s architecture and who now reside in New York.
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