@samuelszuchan: In 2015, China sentenced Zhou Yongkang, a former security chief responsible for the police, the judiciary and prisons, to life in prison. Many commentators said that this broke an unwritten rule that punishments could not touch members of the Communist Party's top ruling committee, of which Zhou was one. They referred to a saying in the Book of Rites compiled around 2,000 years ago, which says that "punishments do not go up to officials". The Party's rebuttal was to invoke the iron-hat princes of the Qing dynasty. "Corruption has no iron-hat princes," it said. The iron-hat princes were 12 noble families during the Qing dynasty. Whereas all other princes saw their title diminish in rank over the generations, the iron-hat princes kept their full status for ever, as well as an annual stipend of 10,000 taels of silver, 10,000 measures of grain and a mansion. The phrase first appeared in the state-run newspaper, the People's Daily, on January 15th, 2015, and was repeated by the anti-corruption commission on February 3rd. When the government spokesman, Lu Xinhua, used it on March 2nd, reporters mobbed him and asked which prince he was referring to. On the day of Zhou's sentencing, the People's Daily used it again, and added: "No special Party members before Party discipline, no special citizens before state law." Both users and questioners of the phrase used the idiom of inherited privilege: there had been protection associated with rank, but it was disputed whether there still was. The Party purged Zhou because he was creating a personal network of influence in the state. There is no law against that, so he was charged with bribery, abuse of power, and leaking secrets instead. On none of the four occasions was the phrase used to say that there were no iron-hat princes in the Party. Each time it was used to say that there were no iron-hat princes when it came to corruption, graft or breaking national laws. The Party was denying that anyone was untouchable. It did not say that rank no longer mattered.

Sam Szuchan

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Saturday 26 September 2026 19:00:00 GMT