Asian Tech Press -- As Internet media outlets have increasingly emerged in China, radical patriotic media also came to the fore. Guancha.cn, an online news and comments aggregator that launched in 2012, claims to take a position of "China concern and global perspective".
However, behind the patriotism shown by the slogan of "China concern", there is an uncompromising capital force to push for it.
1. Guancha.cn Nourished by Patriotism
Five patriot commentators, Jin Canrong, Hu Xijin, Zhang Weiwei, Chen Ping and Li Yi, who have been sought after in China in recent years, have been accused of exploiting the "patriotism" of cynics to make money.
The media accounts of Jin and Li were verified to have Anti-CNN.com founder Rao Jin as the promoter behind them. While the operator of Zhang and Chen's media accounts is Guancha.cn, and the actual controller of Hu's WeChat official account is Shanghai-based venture capital firm Chengwei Capital. The three forces behind these five individuals, which seem to be different, are inextricably linked.
Public information shows that Rao is the CEO of Cesky Web Solutions Co.,Ltd., a Beijing-based service provider dedicated to offer comprehensive Internet solutions.
Rao founded Anti-CNN.com in 2008 under the motto of "declaring war on Western media that smear China". In 2011, Anti-CNN.com received an investment of 10 million yuan from Eric X. Li's Chengwei Capital and transformed into April Media to create a "Chinese identity". However, due to wrong direction of development, April Media failed.
Although April Media failed, American investor Eric X. Li was optimistic about Rao's business model. Li copied such a model and established Guancha.cn, with the same objective as Rao's Anti-CNN.com and April Media: to fight for China's right to speak and build Chinese identity.
According to public information, Guancha.cn was founded in 2010 and officially launched in 2012, relying on the Chunqiu Research Institute to communicate and interact with leaders from all walks of life, both online and offline.
The above mentioned Chunqiu Research Institute was founded by Jin Zhongwei and his friends, with Jin as its executive director. In September 2014, the institute was registered as a private non-enterprise unit under the name of the Shanghai Chunqiu Institute for Strategic and Development Studies.
Guancha.cn used to be the online platform of Social Outlook, which originally was a publication under the supervision and auspices of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS), and later co-published by the Journal of Social Sciences in Shanghai and the privately registered the Shanghai Guanchazhe Cultural and Media Co. However, since June 2014, Social Outlook has been disassociated from Guancha.cn as a result of the termination of the partnership between the SASS and Guancha.cn.
Therefore, the actual co-organizer of Guancha.cn and Social Outlook is the Chunqiu Research Institute.
2. The Chunqiu Research Institute and Eric X. Li
The Chunqiu Research Institute, which is closely associated with Guancha.cn, was not legitimate until it was formally registered under the name of the Shanghai Chunqiu Institute for Strategic and Development Studies in 2014.
However, the institute has been in operation since at least 2010, when Guancha.cn was founded. There is in fact no legally registered institute called the Chunqiu Research Institute in China. Some experts believed that it may be an illegal practice.
The chairman of the institute is Zhang Weiwei, while Sha Ye, the managing partner of Chengwei Capital, is one of the vice-chairmen. And Eric X. Li is nominally a researcher of the Chunqiu Research Institute. Zhang served as an interpreter for Deng Xiaoping, the core of the second generation of Chinese leadership, and is now the director of Fudan University's China Institute. And other fellows of the institute, mostly associated with Fudan University.
Therefore, some people conclude that the so-called Chunqiu Research Institute is actually a circle of Fudan students and colleagues, integrating a number of contacts and resources in the university, with special agents in France and the United States. It is even a political group rooted in Shanghai and promoting nationalism, which has utilized many of Fudan's resources and has some unspoken relationship with certain capital.
Eric X. Li, who was a researcher of the Chunqiu Research Institute and the founder of Chengwei capital, relied on the connections and resources of the institution and began to make patriotism into a business.
3. Chengwei Capital with Strong American Background
According to the available public information, Eric Li established Chengwei Capital in Shanghai in 1999. However, some informed sources pointed out that the investment company was founded in the United States and its founders were Feng Bo and Eric Li.
Chengwei Capital was founded in the U.S. in 1999, with an initial capital of $60 million. The investors included many American bankers and venture capitalists, such as Donald H. Rumsfeld, a veteran American politician, and George Leonard Baker Jr, managing director at Sutter Hill Ventures, the oldest venture capital firm in Silicon Valley.
In essence, Chengwei Capital is a foreign venture capital firm, a partnership fund. Foreigners have been involved in many of Chengwei Captical's investments.
For example, Chengwei Capital engineered the merger of Tudou Holdings Ltd and Youku.com, once China's top two video companies. Before the delisting of Youku Tudou Inc. in 2016, G.L. Baker had served as Independent Director and Member of the Audit Committee and Member of the Compensation Committee of Youku-Tudou merger. He is also a key investor in Chengwei Capital.
In addition, Chengwei Capital was once the largest shareholder in Anton Oilfield Services (Group) Ltd. (3337.HK), the largest private drilling oil and gas wells company in China. However, according to the HKEX shareholding disclosures for Anton Oilfield Services Gp, in 2012, Eric Li, Chengwei Capital and its affiliates liquidated their holdings in the oilfield services provider and withdrew from its shareholder base.
As of December 2020, Chengwei Capital has $2 billion in assets under management and has invested in more than 30 projects, with notable investments in Youku, HanTing Hotel, Hellobike and financial firm China Renaissance.
4. Chengwei Capital's Relationship Network in China
Chengwei Capital has a very complex network of relationships in China.
In January 2001, the New York Times published an article entitled "Rumsfeld to Pay Big Price to Avoid Conflicts". In the article, it was mentioned that the real owners of Chengwei capital were two brothers, Feng Bo and Feng Tao, whose father was Feng Zhijun, who served as a member of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the top legislative body in China, and a member the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), China's top political advisory body, for many years and died in 2017.
Feng Bo's wife is Zhuo Yue, the granddaughter of Deng Xiaoping. His brother Feng Tao is a renowned investor and is currently the managing partner of Shanghai Yongxuan Venture Capital Management Co. Shanghai Yongxuan is the first venture capital management firm in China to manage both domestic and offshore funds, and currently manages approximately $520 million in funds.
The company, formerly known as Shanghai NewMargin Venture Capital Co., Ltd. (NewMargin Ventures), was established led by Jiang Mianheng, son of Jiang Zemin, top leader of third generation of Chinese leadership.
According to public information, Daniel Mao Daolin, formerly CEO of Sina.com, is currently a senior advisor to Chengwei Capital. Mao's wife is Hu Haiqing, the daughter of Hu Jintao, the core of fourth generation of Chinese leadership.
The aforementioned Anton Oilfield Services Gp, whose head Luo Lin was originally an executive of PetroChina, the listed arm of state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), was involved in the anti-corruption storm in oil sector related to Zhou Yongkang in 2013. Chengwei Capital, which is actually controlled by Feng Bo, was the largest shareholder of Anton Oilfield Services Gp until 2012.
5. Chengwei Capital's Relationship Network Overseas
When Chengwei Capital was established in 1999, as mentioned above, there were many U.S. investors. Nowadays, Chengwei Capital also include Kang Pei, a former senior vice president of WK Technology Fund Corp, the largest venture capital firm in Taiwan, and Ping Ping, a former consultant in McKinsey & Company's Beijing office.
The primary investment of Chengwei Capital comes from the United States. Griff Baker, son of George Leonard Baker, was mentioned in a PR Newswire report in 2010 as a venture partner of Chengwei Capital and graduated from Yale University in 2002.
It also publicly mentioned a U.S. partner, Sutter Hill Ventures, and SHV's website publicly stated that it had invested in Chengwei Capital, and that G.L. Baker was a key player in facilitating SHV's investment in the Shanghai-based venture capital firm.
G.L. Baker is reportedly an old acquaintance of Eric Li, having helped him and Feng Bo during the start-up phase of Chengwei Capital, and was one of the first investors.
The famous venture capitalist has intricate relationships with many venture capitalists in the U.S. and has many investments. He also has close ties with Yale University, having been a member of the Yale SOM Board of Advisors, chairman of the Finance Committee at Yale University, and once served on the Yale Investment Committee.
It was allegedly through G.L. Baker's operations that Eric Li and Feng Bo received a $10 million investment from Yale, and Yale's investment largely contributed to other investors' decisions to invest in Chengwei Capital.
In addition, as mentioned in the New York Times' article above, Rumsfeld invested $500,000 in the Shanghai-based Chengwei Capital in 2000. But due to the need to comply with strict rules on conflicts of interest outlined by the Office of Government Ethics, Rumsfeld sold a series of shares before taking office as U.S. Secretary of Defense in 2001. Among the sales were shares of Chengwei Capital, but Rumsfeld declined to disclose the buyer or the sale price.
6. Conclusion
The founder of Guancha.cn, Eric Li, is a venture capitalist whose primary role is as founder and manager of Chengwei Capital. He uses his background as a venture capitalist, an educated scholar in the United States, and a government outsider to advocate statism on behalf of China internationally, talking about current affairs and politics, eulogizing Chinese characteristics, the superiority of the one-party state and the inefficiency of the democratic system.
By Chengwei Capital, Guancha.cn and a group of intellectual elites continue to advocate statism, nationalism, and nlightened absolutism, etc., inciting Chinese netizens to become radical nationalists, which Chinese netizens call "(Little) Pink". This is a great joy for all investors, both foreign and domestic.
The promotion of patriotism, in China today, can certainly be used to attract traffic and profit from it. Patriotism, has been made into a business by capitalists.
