Then you brought me to your room.
Former Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli is suspected of sexually assaulting tennis player Peng Shuai. Who is the man that the mighty party apparatus is trying to protect with all its might?
Welcome guest: In 2012, Zhang Gaoli rose to the highest authority in China. After his retirement he invited tennis player Bing Shuai to a match.
Photo: Mark Schiffelbein (AP)
Kangming Hotel is written in red letters on a huge stone at the gate: there is a lane for limousines, luggage carts are waiting in the lobby, but you are not allowed to enter the facility directly behind the Forbidden City. “This is no longer an ordinary hotel,” the guard at the gate whistles. “Unfortunately you have to go again.” A few years ago, a unit of the Central Committee took over here. You can stay overnight only at the invitation of the Chinese Communist Party.
The welcome guest was Zhang Gaoli. From 2013 to the beginning of 2018, the 75-year-old was now China’s deputy prime minister, and until the fall of 2017, he was a member of the CPC Politburo Standing Committee. The body, to which seven elderly gentlemen belong, is the center of power in the People’s Republic of China.
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