After being missing for more than five months, former chairman of China’s Xinhua Insurance, Li Quan, has been investigated. Li Quan is a graduate of the prestigious “85th class of Wudaokou” in China and is currently a graduate of Tsinghua University’s Wudaokou School of Finance. This class has produced many influential figures in the Chinese financial industry, but it has also become known as the class with the most scandals. Prior to Li Quan, several classmates have been investigated and removed from their positions, including Zhang Yujun, former assistant chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission.
In recent days, the Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the National Supervisory Commission announced that Li Quan, former chairman of Xinhua Life Insurance Company Limited, is under investigation.
The announcement stated that Li Quan’s issues include “resisting organizational review,” “illegally accepting gifts and bribes, using the convenience of state-owned financial institutions to engage in profit-making activities on a large scale, engaging in secondary employment for payment, and excessively receiving salary,” “relying on finance to engage in financial activities,” engaging in power-money transactions, and illegally accepting large sums of money. The Communist Party has decided to expel Li Quan from the party, revoke his benefits, and transfer him to judicial authorities.
As early as April of this year, Chinese media reported on Li Quan’s “disappearance.” It was reported that Li Quan had not been seen since then at his usual badminton club. Some media outlets tried to contact him, but a woman who answered the phone claimed not to know Li Quan and promptly hung up. Internal sources from Xinhua Insurance also revealed to the media that they were unable to reach Li Quan. With the official confirmation of Li Quan’s investigation, the rumors surrounding his disappearance have been confirmed.
Unlike most insurance company executives with experience on the liability side, Li Quan’s career has been more focused on the investment side. As early as the 1990s, he entered the field of private equity investments and later held long-term positions in top public fund companies.
Public records show that Li Quan was born in 1963. From 1988 to 1990, he served as the Business Manager of the Banking Department at the China Rural Trust Investment Company. From 1991 to 1998, he joined Charoen Pokphand International Finance Co., Ltd., where he held positions such as General Manager of the Fund Department and Assistant General Manager of the company. From 1998 to 2010, Li Quan worked at Boshi Fund Management Co., Ltd. for 12 years, where he held positions such as Inspector General, Deputy General Manager, and Executive Deputy General Manager.
In 2010, during changes in shareholding at Boshi Fund, Li Quan, with his expertise in asset management, caught the attention of Xinhua Insurance and was appointed as the President of Xinhua Asset Management Company, responsible for the company’s asset side business.
After serving under two chairmen, Kang Dian and Wan Feng, Li Quan was promoted to chairman of Xinhua Insurance in 2019. Despite the brief chairmanships of Liu Haoling and Xu Zhibin, dispatched by the Central Huijin Investment Ltd from 2019 to 2022, their focus was mainly on Central Huijin’s affairs. In fact, since Wan Feng’s departure in 2019, Li Quan has long been a key figure at Xinhua Insurance.
In September 2022, Xu Zhibin resigned as chairman of Xinhua Insurance, leaving the chairman’s position vacant for over half a year. It was not until April 10, 2023, that Li Quan took over as the company’s seventh chairman. However, just over four months later, Li Quan resigned from all positions at Xinhua Insurance in August 2023, right before his 60th birthday, under the guise of “retirement,” until his disappearance.
An article recently published by Caixin Net, a Chinese media outlet, cited that the trigger for Li Quan’s disappearance may have been mainly related to Xinhua Asset Management (Hong Kong) Co., Ltd. and its subsidiary Xinhua Capital International Management Co., Ltd.
A source close to Xinhua Insurance told Caixin Net that since its establishment in 2013, Xinhua Hong Kong Asset Management has operated independently from the control system of Xinhua Insurance on the governance level. Its personnel, operations, and budgets are relatively independent, with internal governance being mostly opaque.
There are also claims that Li Quan, who ventured into his own businesses early on, has always had enterprises outside, with his family serving as proxies, though he is the actual controller. Whether he has effectively avoided conflicts of interest or engaged in insider trading in recent years remains unclear.
In recent years, the senior management of Xinhua Insurance has experienced frequent upheavals, with two former chairmen, Wan Feng and Li Quan, being investigated consecutively. Wan Feng went missing in November 2022, was expelled from the party in June 2023, and later in December 2023, was sentenced to six years and six months in prison for bribery.
Following Li Quan’s disappearance, in May 2024, Zhang Chi, the current general manager of Xinhua Asset Management under Xinhua Insurance, also went missing with the reasons still unknown. According to a source close to Xinhua Insurance, Zhang Chi had been working closely with Li Quan for over a decade and had previously been asked to cooperate with an investigation, focusing on Xinhua’s investment matters.
It is worth noting that Li Quan is part of the “85th class of Wudaokou,” with “Wudaokou” being a location in Beijing well-known in the financial circles of China. This is because the Wudaokou School of Finance at Tsinghua University is located there. Li Quan graduated from this institution in the year 1988.
The Wudaokou School of Finance was established in 1980 by the founding father of China’s securities, Liu Hongru, as the Graduate Department of the People’s Bank of China. After merging with Tsinghua University in 2012, it was renamed as the Wudaokou School of Finance at Tsinghua University. The school is the first institution in China dedicated to training senior financial management personnel. The graduates who came out of this school’s early stages almost all became significant figures in China’s financial sector.
Among Li Quan’s fellow classmates are well-known figures in the finance industry, including Zhang Yujun, former assistant chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, Dai Zhikang, former chairman of China Investment Corporation, Liu Liange, former chairman of Bank of China, Zhu Congjiu, former director of the Issuance Supervision Department of the CSRC, and Luo Xi, former chairman of China Life Insurance Group. With Li Quan’s downfall, the list of the “85th class of Wudaokou” members who have been investigated has grown once more.
Li Quan’s downfall adds another entry to the list of high-ranking executives in the Chinese insurance industry who have fallen in recent years. In July 2024, Xiao Xing, deputy general manager of China Taiping Property Insurance, stood trial for bribery; in March of the same year, Liu Anlin, former president of PICC Property and Casualty Co., Ltd., was under review; in February, Zhang Ke, former general manager of Taiping Life, was expelled from the party; in September 2023, Wang Bin, former chairman of China Life Insurance, was sentenced to death with reprieve in his first trial; in January 2023, Lin Zhiyong, former general manager of PICC Property and Casualty, was expelled from the party and dismissed from public office; in December 2022, Chen Yong, former general manager of Continental Reinsurance, was arrested; in May 2022, Su Xinfai, former member of the party committee of PICC Investment Holdings, was under investigation; in December 2021, Shen Dong, former deputy general manager of PICC Property and Casualty, was under review.