[atimes]China’s former anti-corruption tzar is being tipped as vice-president after stepping down last year.President Xi, who might see him as the ideal man to shore up rapidly deteriorating trade relations with the US.
“He has an international Rolodex and stays in touch with people,” a friend told the Financial Times. “He says it’s a shame that most of his colleagues don’t do the same.”
But few have his forthright demeanor. In his 2015 memoir, Dealing with China, Hank Paulson, the former US Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs CEO, recalled a bruising encounter with Wang at the height of the global financial crisis in 2010.
“You were my teacher but look at your system, Hank, we aren’t sure we should be learning from you anymore,” Paulson recounted.
Blunt approach
Predictably, there are concerns that this blunt approach might prove counterproductive when dealing with President Donald Trump’s administration in Washington. Putting out the flames, not fanning them, would be the “fire brigade chief’s” priority. There are also other problems.
Even now, he is respected but not liked.
“This could be a figurehead job with no real power or a very important role,” Hu Ping, the editor of the Chinese-language monthly Beijing Spring in New York, said. “[But because of Xi’s backing] Wang could become the most powerful [vice-president] in Chinese Communist Party history.”
“Wang’s political resurgence could help [President] Xi serve another term,” Xie Xuanjun, a China scholar based in New York, told Radio Free Asia.
With his ‘enforcer’ back in the picture, anything is possible.
Wang is named VP of China