As China Confronts Scandal, Spin Begins

BEIJING â€”  Engaging in a remarkable bit of spin control on the biggest smuggling scandal in modern Chinese history, the Communist regime Thursday publicly denied reports that the wife of a Politburo member had been implicated by the investigation.

A spokesman for China’s State Council said that Lin Youfang, the wife of Beijing Communist Party boss and Politburo member Jia Qinglin, is living a free and comfortable life, despite widespread reports that she had been held for questioning.

The spokesman also dismissed rumors that Jia, one of President Jiang Zemin’s allies, had divorced Lin last month to distance himself from the smuggling scandal unfolding in the port of Xiamen, in the southeastern province of Fujian.

A Hong Kong-based television network with close ties to Beijing broadcast an interview with Lin in which she stressed her lack of any connection with the case.

Lin, who headed one of Fujian’s biggest import-export companies when her husband was the province’s party secretary in the early ‘90s, told the network that she continues to live a quiet, almost homemaker-like existence with Jia in Beijing. She said she had not been back to Fujian since 1997.

And despite her previous high position in the Fujian trading world and her husband’s job as Fujian’s top official, Lin denied ever having heard of the company at the center of the scandal, the Yuanhua Group, an enormous Xiamen conglomerate that is believed to have brought $10 billion in bootleg oil, luxury cars and electronics into China over the last several years.

Jia too received a show of support from the central leadership when state media broadcast images of him side by side with the Chinese president.

The exercise in damage control followed days of increasing media attention to the Xiamen scandal, which had previously been blacked out in the official press.

As foreign news outlets began publishing stories about the investigation, the Chinese media finally joined in. A newspaper in Guangdong province reported Lin’s alleged involvement in the case, as well as the possible involvement of a relative of one of China’s most senior military officials, a retired general of the People’s Liberation Army.

But a day later, the newspaper contradicted its previous story and called Lin “a virtuous woman.�

The high-profile denials have only served to fuel the buzz in Beijing about the case, the most serious corruption scandal to engulf the Communist Party since former Beijing party boss Chen Xitong--Jia’s immediate predecessor--was stripped of his titles in a massive graft and bribery probe.

Hundreds of inspectors have been sent from Beijing to Xiamen to investigate the smuggling ring. Already, two Xiamen deputy party secretaries have been detained, as well as the local customs chief and a provincial police official. The head of Yuanhua and a Xiamen vice mayor are thought to have fled the country.

Authorities suspect that scores of other officials were also involved.