Why do some people feel sorry for Huang Qifan's dismissal?

(Deutsche Welle Chinese website) As early as when he served as mayor of Chongqing from 2010 to 2016, Huang Qifan won labels such as "Mayor of Finance" and "Mayor Who Knows the Most about Economics". His series of state-owned assets reorganization and industrial innovation policies promoted Chongqing’s economic take-off. From 2013 to 2015, Chongqing’s GDP growth rate led China for three consecutive years.

After resigning as mayor of Chongqing at the end of 2016, Huang Qifan did not fade out of the public eye. Instead, he frequently attended various financial forums as a distinguished professor at Fudan University, executive vice chairman of the academic committee of the National Innovation and Development Strategy Research Association, and vice chairman of the China International Economic Exchange Center. His speeches covered almost everything from macroeconomics to finance and real estate, from industrial policy to RMB internationalization, and were evaluated as having detailed data, clear logic, and daring to tell the truth.

In 2017, Huang Qifan published a long economic report in Nantong, Jiangsu Province, talking about the high debt of Chinese enterprises, real estate risks, etc. He warned that although large companies such as Evergrande and Wanda have huge assets, their debt burdens are also staggering. In 2019, Huang Qifan published a 10,000-word long article stating that China's era of high real estate growth has ended, and that a long-term regulatory mechanism for land, finance, taxation, and affordable housing should be established to prevent imbalances between real estate and the real economy and financial hijacking. The subsequent outbreak of Evergrande's debt crisis proved his "foresight."

As the anti-extradition movement in Hong Kong continues in 2019, Huang Qifan responded to the public opinion that Shenzhen can replace Hong Kong. Hong Kong's truly irreplaceable advantage lies in the institutional environment formed by "one country, two systems", which cannot be replaced by Shenzhen and Shanghai. He also said that generations of CCP leaders, including now Xi Jinping, have seen the complementary advantages brought about by the different systems in Hong Kong and the mainland. The video of his relevant internal speech has been widely circulated on the Internet in Hong Kong and Mainland China, and has been reported and interpreted by all major mainstream media in Hong Kong.

When it comes to finance, Huang Qifan has repeatedly used the phrase "managing money for the rich and financing for the poor" in public speeches to summarize the essence of finance, and proposed that the three links of "credit, leverage and risk" must be grasped, a balance must be found between development and risk control, and the purpose of all financial activities is to serve the real economy. He also publicly criticized P2P online lending under the banner of Internet finance, but in essence it was a fancy Ponzi scheme and illegal fund-raising.

In 2020, Huang Qifan's two books were published - "Analysis and Thinking: Huang Qifan's Fudan Economics Class" and "Structural Reform: Problems and Countermeasures of China's Economy" - respectively summarizing his work as a distinguished professor at Fudan University around "macro-control", "base currency", Lectures on economic topics such as "capital market", "real estate development" and "opening up to the outside world" as well as a series of views on supply-side structural reform interpret the underlying logic of the Chinese economy in his eyes, the key contradictions of the Chinese economy and provide prescriptions on how to "prescribe countermeasures".

In 2022, his book "Strategy and Path: Huang Qifan's Twelve Economic Lessons" was published, focusing on the interpretation of economic strategies such as the new development pattern of dual cycles, dual carbon goals, and digital economy. "Reorganization and Breakthrough" published in 2024 systematically collects how Huang Qifan resolved local development bottlenecks and debt crises through "restructuring thinking" during his more than fifty years of work. Huang Qifan has also co-published works such as "New Productivity" in recent years.

Huang Qifan was officially declared suspected of serious violations of discipline and law on October 13, 2026. He is currently undergoing disciplinary review and supervisory investigation by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the National Supervisory Commission. There are different opinions on the reasons for his dismissal. In May 2025, Bi Jingquan, the second chairman of the China International Economic Exchange Center, an official think tank where Huang Qifan once served as vice chairman, was dismissed. In September 2026, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison on charges involving bribery while running the center. Since the beginning of this year, major anti-corruption cases have occurred one after another in Chongqing’s officialdom. In March, Hu Henghua, the then mayor of Chongqing, was investigated; in April, Luo Lin, a member of the Standing Committee of the Chongqing Municipal Party Committee, was investigated.