An Explosion of Bureaucratic Capital - On the Tianjin Blast
On the 19th August, 2015, the Xinhua News Agency released an interesting report on last week’s Tianjin Ruihai International Logistics storage explosion. While indirectly denying that Li Liang, the nominal chief shareholder of the company, is the nephew of Li Ruihuan, former Standing Committee member of the Politbureau, it confirmed that another chief shareholder, Dong Sheqian, is the son of the former chief of Tianjin Police. It also revealed that the real boss of the company is Yu Xuewei, although his background is still not clear. The reason that the company easily received all the permits necessary for operation despite blatant violation of most rules is because both Dong and Yu colluded with different government departments. The report quotes Dong as saying, “while my connection is chiefly the police and the fire fighting department, Yu has connection with the Production Safety Inspection Bureau, the port management, the customs and the environmental protection bureau.”