Accounting Firms’ Gold Rush Puts US Credibility on the Line

By He Qinglian on December 24, 2012.

Translated by Cao Yaxue on January 23, 2012.

The Securities and Exchange Commission in December charged the Chinese affiliates of five big accounting firms Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PwC and BDO for failing to comply with laws requiring access to the work papers of their audit on Chinese companies. The SEC was supposed to make a decision at the end of the December, including the possibility of delisting all Chinese companies in the US exchange. But the “deadline” has long passed and we haven’t heard the outcome of the suit. I am afraid it has probably disappeared into the black box called “diplomatic solutions.”

Xi Jinping: Guardian of the Red Regime

By He Qinglian on January 14, 2013.

Many people persistently make remarks that Xi Jinping might or has to initiate political reform. The story that appeared on January 13 in Ming pao should serve to somewhat cool down the wishful thinking of these observers.

Tocqueville and China's political predicament

By He Qinglian in December 2012.

[Partially abridged translation].

To this day, China's politics is still determined by those at the high level. The hobbies and interests of those people, including the books they read, therefore, become wind vanes that people use to guess what would happen next in politics. Wang Qishan's recommendation that people read L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution (The Old Regime and the Revolution), a classic book on the French Revolution by the 19th century French historian Alexis de Tocqueville, has helped make it a bestseller.

China in a state of Zero-Sum Game

By He Qinglian on December 30, 2012

On December 26, 2012, the Bloomberg published a story about the fortune of the Red families of China. Some of the data made me realize that China has already entered the stage of zero-sum game. 

Zero-Sum Game: what the winner gains is what the loser loses

That data is: “Three children alone—General Wang’s son, Wang Jun; Deng’s son-in-law, He Ping; and Chen Yuan, the son of Mao’s economic tsar—headed or still run state-owned companies with combined assets of about $1.6 trillion in 2011. That is equivalent to more than a fifth of China’s annual economic output”. By “annual economic output” it means GDP. China's GDP ranks second in the world.