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Patrick Boehler

Betsy Li Heng, the daughter of former Chinese Communist Party leader Hu Yaobang, has dismissed rumours about her private life and her association with GlaxoSmithKline, a pharmaceutical conglomerate currently under criminal investigation in China for bribery, according to an online statement. 
The allegations are the latest in a series of adverse reports circulating online on the offspring of the reformist party elder, whose death triggered the Tiananmen protests in 1989.

In the statement, which first appeared on Monday, Li reportedly denied she had business dealings with GSK after leaving the company six years ago. 
Li served as director of GSK's corporate affairs in its Beijing office from the mid-1990s to 2007. Her departure from the company predates the alleged acts of bribery by the company in China.
Li also denied she had a daughter who was studying in Britain. "Ms Li Heng does not have a daughter," the statement reads. "Rumours are a tool to hurt people."
The unsigned statement, which could not be independently verified, is dated July 27 and was first shared on the official Sina Weibo account of KDNet, a popular forum for political debate, on Monday.
Li, who adopted her mother's surname, also said she and her husband Liu Xiaojiang did not own luxury villas in Beijing downtown and in the Xiangshan mountains west of Beijing, as claimed in online posts. Photos of a purported residence had circulated online earlier in July.
Her brother Hu Deping, a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, also dismissed online allegations of owning a luxury property in Beijing, which appeared around the same time.
Hu said that his father's descendants had nothing to hide, but the publication of the family assets should be made in an orderly manner. 
At the same time, Xinhua journalist Wang Wenzhi accused China Resources, a Hong Kong-listed company, of "massive corruption", in a rare exposure by journalists of the state-run news agency.
Observers noticed that Li's other brother Liu Hu served as a former deputy general manager and executive board director for the company until his retirement in 2005.
For Wang Jiangsong, a philosophy professor at the China Institute of Industrial Relations in Beijing, these attacks have been orchestrated by opponents of the Hu family.
"It is probably extreme conservatives trying to blacken their names," he said.
Days ahead of the leadership transition in the Communist Party in autumn, Hu's eldest son Hu Deping wrote an open letter calling for reform and for policies that conform more to the country's constitution.
"Constitutional rule is an abhorrence to both [the Communist Party's] extreme right and left wing," said Wang. "The Hu family represents healthy forces within the party."
"The influence and appeal of them openly parading the banner of constitutionalism is no trivial matter," he said. "Therefore, they had to be politically ruined and discredited among the people."
Among the four hundred people who have commented on the statement on microblogs, many have expressed similar suspicions about a smearing campaign and expressed support for the family. Some have questioned the veracity of the statement.
Hu Deping could not be reached for immediate comment. 


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