Earlier this year a red Ferrari turned up at the doorstep of former US ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman. The driver, reports the Wall Street Journal, was Bo Guagua, the 23 year-old son of Chongqing Party boss, Bo Xilai and grandson of Bo Yibo, one of the ‘eight immortals’ revered for their role in the 1949 revolution. That makes young Bo akin to Chinese nobility – one of the ‘princeling’ children of senior Party founders (see WiC35). In fact, the Journal seems to have been on a bit of princeling-hunt this week, noting that their “evident love of luxury” is proving embarrassing for a supposedly proletarian Party.
So further bad news that the latest Chinese tourist attraction in Sydney is a house owned by yet another princeling son. A residence on uber-exclusive Wolseley Road in the city was bought for $32.4 million by Zeng Wei, the Journal reports. Zeng is the son of Zeng Qinghong, formerly President Jiang Zemin’s right hand man and a member of the nine person Politburo Standing Committee. The extravagant spending doesn’t end there: the younger Zeng wants to bulldoze the existing structure and put up a $5 million mansion in its place.
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