(Deutsche Welle Chinese website) "Caixin.com" published an article on October 15 titled "Huang Qifan under investigation: A political tumbler's tumultuous journey." It revealed that former Chongqing mayor Huang Qifan was taken away from his home by relevant departments on the evening of October 10 before he was officially announced to be under investigation for "suspected serious violations of discipline and law." Also taken away at the same time was his son Huang Ranfei. Huang Ranfei graduated from the Finance Department of Fudan University with a bachelor's degree, and later graduated with a master's degree in computer finance from Cameron University in the United States. He worked in several foreign investment banks in his early years. Since 2021, he has served as the special assistant to the chairman of Shandong aluminum giant Weiqiao Group and the person in charge of the Shenzhen headquarters. He is responsible for Weiqiao's industrial capital and supply chain finance layout in the Greater Bay Area.
Since the beginning of this year, there have been successive high-level shocks in Chongqing’s official circles. 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. The "Caixin.com" article also stated that Chongqing's official and business circles did not seem to be much surprised by Huang Qifan's dismissal. In the previous month, two important executives of "Yufu", an important financial platform built by Huang Qifan during his tenure in Chongqing, were dismissed. One is Xie Wenhui, the former party committee secretary and chairman of Chongqing Yufu Holdings, and the other is Wu Jian, who once served as party committee member and deputy general manager of Chongqing Yufu Asset Management Group Co., Ltd. In addition, Liao Qingxuan, one of the core figures in Chongqing's state-owned assets reform and Yufu's capital operation system, recently suffered an accident.
Huang Qifan’s innovative move
Before analyzing the issues related to "Chongqing Wealth", the "Caixin.com" article first talked about Huang Qifan's contribution to Chongqing and called him "the first person to initiate land finance." The article said: "It is generally recognized by the outside world that Huang Qifan has made many innovations in Chongqing's economy. Chongqing's economic development has maintained double-digit growth for many consecutive years, ranking among the top among provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities. It has also used a "vertical integration" model to attract foreign investment, introducing brands such as HP and Acer, and then driving OEMs such as Foxconn, Quanta and Inventec to settle in, forming a "brand + OEM + The laptop industry chain of "parts and components matching" has made Chongqing quickly become an important laptop production base in the world; the automobile industry has also adopted a similar idea of whole-part collaboration."
The article also believes: "It is worth mentioning that among the many regional reform experiments led by Huang Qifan, the land ticket exploration and household registration reform are of national significance... Closely related to the land ticket transaction is the transformation of farmers' identities. Huang Qifan believes that the migration of migrant workers to the city is not the old, young, sick and disabled, but the demographic dividend of young people as the main body... At present, there are more than 400 people in Chongqing Thousands of migrant workers have been transformed into citizens, and their quality of life and life conditions have been improved.” In addition, Huang Qifan also introduced a model of land finance and land finance to drive regional economic development in Chongqing based on his experience in participating in the development of Pudong in Shanghai. This model “quickly became a national model, and provinces competed to imitate it.”
Former Dusseldorf Mayor Geisel: Huang Qifan’s contribution is obvious to all
Thomas Geisel, a well-known German politician, lawyer and current member of the European Parliament, visited Chongqing twice in 2014 and 2017 and held talks with Huang Qifan when he was the mayor of Dusseldorf, the capital of North Rhine-Westphalia and a sister city of Chongqing. He recalled that Chongqing was developing rapidly and was very dynamic at that time. Metro and Henkel Group, both headquartered in Dusseldorf, had set up branches in Chongqing. "Mr. Huang's contributions as mayor are obvious to all," Geisel said. "It is very important for Dusseldorf to establish and maintain a sister-city relationship with Chongqing, a city as dynamic as Chongqing that receives special attention from national leaders. We also had high hopes at that time."
Geisel was surprised by the news that Huang Qifan was under investigation. He told a reporter from Deutsche Welle, "The alleged serious violation of discipline and law includes allegations of corruption in the Chinese official context. But I have no way of judging this. I also have no way of judging whether it involves a power struggle within the party, or whether he was too bold on this or that issue and criticized the party leadership, so he must bear the consequences."
One of Huang Qifan’s legacy in Chongqing: local debt risk
An article on Caixin.com on October 15 pointed out, “After the 2008 international financial crisis, with the implementation of China’s ‘4 trillion’ stimulus plan, local governments have become more enthusiastic about using urban investment debt financing, and the original investment and financing models have gradually alienated, and debt risks have risen.” Although since around 2014, the central government has made several rounds of unified deployment to promote debt reduction and clean up local hidden debt risks, “Chongqing has not escaped from the dilemma of alienated local investment and financing models and continued debt expansion. In the latest round of "debt package" launched in 2023, Chongqing was identified as one of the 12 key dedebt provinces with high debt risks. "
The article read: "A person familiar with Chongqing officialdom said that Huang Qifan's resignation was related to the problems exposed in the mixed-ownership reform of some state-owned enterprises in Chongqing. A Shanghai cadre revealed that Huang Qifan had led the reform of state-owned enterprises in his early years when he served as deputy secretary-general of the Municipal Party Committee, deputy director of the Municipal Restructuring Committee, and director of the Municipal Economic Commission in Shanghai. "Because he touched the interests of some people and offended many people, he had no choice but to go to Chongqing for promotion."
The article mentioned that while serving as the executive deputy mayor of Chongqing, Huang Qifan established Chongqing Yufu Asset Management Group Co., Ltd. in February 2004, commonly known as "Lao Yufu". Its original intention was to package and acquire non-performing bank debt, resolve state-owned enterprise debt crises, land remediation, and collect equity interests in local financial institutions. Lao Yufu later participated in promoting the restructuring of Southwest Securities and the equity layout of Bank of Chongqing and Chongqing Rural Commercial Bank. In 2016, Chongqing established Chongqing Yufu Holding Group Co., Ltd., which is 100% wholly-owned by the Chongqing State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission. In the early days of establishment, Yufu Holdings and Lao Yufu had "one set of people and two brands."
The "roly-poly" fell
At the end of 2016, Huang Qifan resigned as mayor of Chongqing. At that time, he was over 64 years old, close to the 65-year-old retirement red line for ministerial-level officials, and was regarded as a normal expiration of his term and "safe landing." Huang Qifan was once a subordinate of Zhu Rongji, Huang Ju, Wu Bangguo, etc. in Shanghai. When he was the mayor of Chongqing, he "worked with" Bo Xilai and Sun Zhengcai, the municipal party secretaries who were successively dismissed. His "escape" once earned him the nickname "Chongqing Political Tumbler". According to reports, after Wang Lijun, the deputy mayor of Chongqing who was formerly in charge of the public security system, fled into the US Consulate in Chengdu on February 6, 2012, Huang Qifan mainly intervened to persuade him to leave the US Consulate. Later, Wang Lijun was taken away by the state security agency and put under investigation. On September 24, 2012, Wang Lijun was sentenced to 15 years in prison for defecting, bending the law for personal gain, abusing power, and accepting bribes. If he does not receive a commutation or medical parole, he will be released from prison around February 2027.
Before Huang Qifan resigned as mayor, he was rumored to be the Secretary-General of the State Council to assist then Premier Li Keqiang in solving the problem of economic slowdown. After his retirement, Huang Qifan frequently attended financial forums as a distinguished professor at Fudan University and vice chairman of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, delivered speeches on various economic issues, and published books. He received widespread attention and was called an "Internet celebrity economist."
Huang Qifan's dismissal once again highlights that Chongqing has become one of the most violent areas in China's anti-corruption storm. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Chongqing has seen the collapse of several municipal party secretaries, mayors and public security directors. In addition, Huang Qifan's "fall" has also triggered a profound chain reaction and shock in the financial state-owned assets system and academic think tank circles. It is regarded as reflecting a new trend of purges in officialdom, causing the outside world to speculate on which senior officials will be implicated and which force at the top of the CCP is leading the investigation. In May 2025, Bi Jingquan, the second chairman of the official think tank China Center for International Economic Exchanges, was dismissed and sentenced to 14 years in prison in September this year.
Huang Qifan’s “liquidation” ten years after his retirement also means that the CCP’s review of local governance and local debt models has entered the deep water zone of “two decades of backward investigation.” Looking back for twenty or even thirty years is an important mechanism in the anti-corruption campaign led by Xi Jinping. However, the impact of the high-pressure situation on the economy and public sentiment is difficult to estimate.
