Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
I think it is time to look back and give credit to the pioneer of Chinese Carrier program without their determination the success we witness today is not possible
I have 3 men in mind Admiral Li Huaqing, Xu Zhengping and the many Shipping Tycoon like Sir YK Pao and Tung Chee Wa Of course Dalian shipyard
I am particularly awe struck by Xu Zhengping who single handedly change the course of PLAN. He is former basket ball star of PLA then immigrate to Hongkong and find fortune in bussiness. His coup in sureptiously purchase the Varyag save China 20 years. Here is his story
PLA brass ‘defied Beijing’ over plan to buy China’s first aircraft carrier Liaoning
Xu Zengping reveals how two generals went against the central government's wishes and helped him buy the pride of China's fleet
PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 28 April, 2015, 11:44pm
UPDATED : Friday, 01 May, 2015, 8:15am
For nearly two decades it was one of China's best-kept secrets but now Hong Kong-based businessman Xu Zengping is breaking his silence and unmasking the PLA masterminds behind the purchase of what became the country's first aircraft carrier.
In an exclusive interview with the South China Morning Post, 63-year-old Xu, a former People's Liberation Army basketball player, revealed that the generals behind the deal were two top-ranking members of the Communist Party's "princeling" generation.
He said late deputy naval commander He Pengfei and Ji Shengde, the then-PLA intelligence chief who was working independently of the intelligence bureau at the time, were the backroom drivers of the covert deal to buy a 70 per cent-completed Kuznetsov-class Varyag carrier from Ukraine's Black Sea shipyard so that it could become the pride of the PLA fleet.
He, who held the rank of vice-admiral, is the only son of the legendary Long March marshal, He Long , a revolutionary hero to veterans like Xu and his peers on the mainland.
Ji is the son of Ji Pengfei, a former vice-premier and a chief drafter of Hong Kong's Basic Law in the 1980s.
He Pengfei died of a heart attack in 2001 at 56. Ji was given a suspended death sentence by a military court in 2000 for bribery and illegal fundraising.
The carrier plan hatched by one of the navy's top leaders was carried out in secret and in defiance of national policy at the time. Xu told the Post in January that then-president and Central Military Commission chairman Jiang Zemin had rejected calls to add such a warship to the navy out of concern that it could upset the United States.
That opposition lasted until May, 1999, when the US bombed - Washington said it was a mistake - the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.
Xu said He first approached him about the project in April 1996. Two Hong Kong tycoons had been asked to help with the deal but eventually decided against it and Xu came on board. Xu and He met at least six times over roughly a year before Xu finally agreed in March 1997 to be his proxy. They continued meeting regularly after that until late 1998.
Ji then came on board the project to coordinate operations behind the scenes, according to Xu. "Ji was the real boss behind the deal," Xu said. "He, Ji and several military officials had done a lot of preliminary work for the carrier deal because of their patriotism and strong ambitions for the military."
Xu said his contacts with the PLA's envoys were carried out in the greatest secrecy. "My passion for the project burned strongly and I felt like a spy working with my team involved in the deal," Xu said. "There were many times when we had to discuss details of [our plan] on a footpath or in a secluded area."
The Ukrainian government was also concerned about upsetting the Americans and so did not want to openly sell the carrier to the Chinese military. Xu's challenge, then, was to convince the shipyard that he wanted to turn the massive hulk into a floating casino.
Xu set up offices in Beijing and in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev in the first half of 1997 to coordinate the carrier bid. The Kiev office was staffed by shipbuilding experts from stated-owned China State Shipbuilding Corporation and the Commission on Science, Technology, and Industry for National Defence, who had to "work out how to meet the requirements from the Ukrainian government". Those experts were not working for the government at the time. "The Beijing office comprised a [ former] senior military official and my own staff to back up and give instructions to the experts in Ukraine," Xu said.
The experts had been among those sent by Beijing to Ukraine since 1992 to study the possibility of buying the Varyag. Xu said he had hired them after the State Council decided to abandon the carrier project.
The Beijing office was headed by Xiao Yun, a retired senior colonel who left his position as deputy head of the naval air force's armament department, to take up the new job, Xu said. Like He and Ji, Xiao is also a princeling; his late father, general Xiao Hua, was one of the Communist Party's revolutionary founders.
Zhong Jiafei, who was a senior colonel at the time and the project agency head of the CMC's Arms Trading Company, was the middleman between He and Xu. Zhong was the only witness to all of the meetings between Xu and He, Xu said.
The Arms Trading Company was set up on September 26, 1989, by then-CMC vice-chairman admiral Liu Huaqing , according to the website of the state-owned weapons maker China North Industries Group Corporation, which later took over ATC.
Liu, dubbed the father of China's navy, is well known for his belief that China should have an aircraft carrier. But Xu refused to say if Liu knew of the covert plan. Xu said He and Ji were the only backers and the CMC was not aware of the operation.
But what is known is that a company headed by the admiral's daughter was a major funding vehicle for the deal. In the 1990s, Liu's daughter, Helen Liu Chaoying , was a senior executive of state-owned China Aerospace International Holding Ltd (Casil), an offshoot of satellite developer China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.
Hong Kong-listed Casil helped Xu put up the US$50 million the Ukrainian government required as a deposit in a first-class international bank. According to two interim Casil reports in 2007 and 2009, the company loaned HK$330 million in 1997 at 15 per cent annual interest for two years to Xu's firm in Hong Kong, Chinluck Properties.
Chinluck used a 41,800 square metre block of land on Peng Chau as collateral for the loan but relations between Casil and Chinluck apparently soured. In June 2004, Chinluck sued Casil, claiming Casil only loaned it HK$251 million. The two parties settled the suit in 2007. Xu said it took 14 years but he finally repaid the HK$251 million debt in June 2011 with interest, and regained ownership of the Peng Chau property.
A Casil spokesman refused to comment on the loan, saying the company now did not have any business with Xu. But a retired Shanghai colonel said Ji knew Casil's Liu, and when "Xu had financial problems in 1997, Ji asked Liu to help him. That's why Liu's Casil lent money to him".
Xiao Yun and Zhong, who retired as deputy head of the General Armaments Department's foreign affairs bureau in the late 2000s, could not be contacted for comment.
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as:
I have 3 men in mind Admiral Li Huaqing, Xu Zhengping and the many Shipping Tycoon like Sir YK Pao and Tung Chee Wa Of course Dalian shipyard
I am particularly awe struck by Xu Zhengping who single handedly change the course of PLAN. He is former basket ball star of PLA then immigrate to Hongkong and find fortune in bussiness. His coup in sureptiously purchase the Varyag save China 20 years. Here is his story
PLA brass ‘defied Beijing’ over plan to buy China’s first aircraft carrier Liaoning
Xu Zengping reveals how two generals went against the central government's wishes and helped him buy the pride of China's fleet
PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 28 April, 2015, 11:44pm
UPDATED : Friday, 01 May, 2015, 8:15am
For nearly two decades it was one of China's best-kept secrets but now Hong Kong-based businessman Xu Zengping is breaking his silence and unmasking the PLA masterminds behind the purchase of what became the country's first aircraft carrier.
In an exclusive interview with the South China Morning Post, 63-year-old Xu, a former People's Liberation Army basketball player, revealed that the generals behind the deal were two top-ranking members of the Communist Party's "princeling" generation.
He said late deputy naval commander He Pengfei and Ji Shengde, the then-PLA intelligence chief who was working independently of the intelligence bureau at the time, were the backroom drivers of the covert deal to buy a 70 per cent-completed Kuznetsov-class Varyag carrier from Ukraine's Black Sea shipyard so that it could become the pride of the PLA fleet.
He, who held the rank of vice-admiral, is the only son of the legendary Long March marshal, He Long , a revolutionary hero to veterans like Xu and his peers on the mainland.
Ji is the son of Ji Pengfei, a former vice-premier and a chief drafter of Hong Kong's Basic Law in the 1980s.
He Pengfei died of a heart attack in 2001 at 56. Ji was given a suspended death sentence by a military court in 2000 for bribery and illegal fundraising.
The carrier plan hatched by one of the navy's top leaders was carried out in secret and in defiance of national policy at the time. Xu told the Post in January that then-president and Central Military Commission chairman Jiang Zemin had rejected calls to add such a warship to the navy out of concern that it could upset the United States.
That opposition lasted until May, 1999, when the US bombed - Washington said it was a mistake - the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.
Xu said He first approached him about the project in April 1996. Two Hong Kong tycoons had been asked to help with the deal but eventually decided against it and Xu came on board. Xu and He met at least six times over roughly a year before Xu finally agreed in March 1997 to be his proxy. They continued meeting regularly after that until late 1998.
Ji then came on board the project to coordinate operations behind the scenes, according to Xu. "Ji was the real boss behind the deal," Xu said. "He, Ji and several military officials had done a lot of preliminary work for the carrier deal because of their patriotism and strong ambitions for the military."
Xu said his contacts with the PLA's envoys were carried out in the greatest secrecy. "My passion for the project burned strongly and I felt like a spy working with my team involved in the deal," Xu said. "There were many times when we had to discuss details of [our plan] on a footpath or in a secluded area."
The Ukrainian government was also concerned about upsetting the Americans and so did not want to openly sell the carrier to the Chinese military. Xu's challenge, then, was to convince the shipyard that he wanted to turn the massive hulk into a floating casino.
Xu set up offices in Beijing and in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev in the first half of 1997 to coordinate the carrier bid. The Kiev office was staffed by shipbuilding experts from stated-owned China State Shipbuilding Corporation and the Commission on Science, Technology, and Industry for National Defence, who had to "work out how to meet the requirements from the Ukrainian government". Those experts were not working for the government at the time. "The Beijing office comprised a [ former] senior military official and my own staff to back up and give instructions to the experts in Ukraine," Xu said.
The experts had been among those sent by Beijing to Ukraine since 1992 to study the possibility of buying the Varyag. Xu said he had hired them after the State Council decided to abandon the carrier project.
The Beijing office was headed by Xiao Yun, a retired senior colonel who left his position as deputy head of the naval air force's armament department, to take up the new job, Xu said. Like He and Ji, Xiao is also a princeling; his late father, general Xiao Hua, was one of the Communist Party's revolutionary founders.
Zhong Jiafei, who was a senior colonel at the time and the project agency head of the CMC's Arms Trading Company, was the middleman between He and Xu. Zhong was the only witness to all of the meetings between Xu and He, Xu said.
The Arms Trading Company was set up on September 26, 1989, by then-CMC vice-chairman admiral Liu Huaqing , according to the website of the state-owned weapons maker China North Industries Group Corporation, which later took over ATC.
Liu, dubbed the father of China's navy, is well known for his belief that China should have an aircraft carrier. But Xu refused to say if Liu knew of the covert plan. Xu said He and Ji were the only backers and the CMC was not aware of the operation.
But what is known is that a company headed by the admiral's daughter was a major funding vehicle for the deal. In the 1990s, Liu's daughter, Helen Liu Chaoying , was a senior executive of state-owned China Aerospace International Holding Ltd (Casil), an offshoot of satellite developer China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.
Hong Kong-listed Casil helped Xu put up the US$50 million the Ukrainian government required as a deposit in a first-class international bank. According to two interim Casil reports in 2007 and 2009, the company loaned HK$330 million in 1997 at 15 per cent annual interest for two years to Xu's firm in Hong Kong, Chinluck Properties.
Chinluck used a 41,800 square metre block of land on Peng Chau as collateral for the loan but relations between Casil and Chinluck apparently soured. In June 2004, Chinluck sued Casil, claiming Casil only loaned it HK$251 million. The two parties settled the suit in 2007. Xu said it took 14 years but he finally repaid the HK$251 million debt in June 2011 with interest, and regained ownership of the Peng Chau property.
A Casil spokesman refused to comment on the loan, saying the company now did not have any business with Xu. But a retired Shanghai colonel said Ji knew Casil's Liu, and when "Xu had financial problems in 1997, Ji asked Liu to help him. That's why Liu's Casil lent money to him".
Xiao Yun and Zhong, who retired as deputy head of the General Armaments Department's foreign affairs bureau in the late 2000s, could not be contacted for comment.
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as:
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