Thread by @PekingMike

THREAD: China's Communist Party Princelings in the art auction market. They are EVERYWHERE. We found some more fascinating links while reporting this story on a missing van Gogh painting. FOLLOW ALONG (1/x)
nytimes.com/2023/05/29/wor…

We start at the Sotheby's auction on Nov. 5, 2014. The van Gogh still life was hanging behind the auctioneer, Henry Wyndham. Sotheby's put out a Youtube video of the auction. When the bidding for the van Gogh starts, it briefly pans to a woman on the phone

The woman - this woman - is on the phone with the man who won the bidding war - movie producer Wang Zhongjun. You can read all about him in the story. Her name is Jen Hua, or Hua Zhen (华真）(3/x)

Who is Jen Hua? Well, now she's the head of Sotheby's in China. But she is also the granddaughter of Hua Guofeng, the man who (briefly) replaced Chairman Mao as China's leader. Here she is with her late grandfather (4/x)

Not to be outdone, the founder of China's premier auction house, Guardian, is married to the granddaughter of Chairman Mao. He is a billionaire, his insurance company was once the biggest shareholder of Sotheby's (before it went private). His name is Chen Dongsheng. (5/x)

Christie's plays the game as well. Until a decade ago, their partner in China was a company run by the son-in-law of the No. 4 man on the Politburo Standing Committee at the time, Jia Qinglin. The son-in-law is Li Botan. (6/x)

The high-end art market got a big boost with the opening of a freeport at the Beijing Capital International Airport. That bonded zone was the project of the most famous "white gloves" (proxy shareholders) in China, Whitney Duan and Desmond Shum. (7/x)

The couple is famous because Whitney Duan set up companies that held shares for relatives of China's former premier, Wen Jiabao. It is all detailed in the 2012 Pulitzer Prize-winning story by @DavidBarboza2 (8/x)
nytimes.com/2012/10/26/bus…

And finally, when China Guardian was just getting started three decades ago, one of its key executives was a woman Wang Yannan, the daughter of Zhao Ziyang, the former general secretary of the Communist Party (9/x)

I am sure there are more connections. If you know of any, let me know. Send me a DM or an email to michael dot forsythe @ nytimes dot com. Or send me a tip through the NYT tipline END THREAD nytimes.com/tips