At the center of the sex tape scandal that has led to the recent dismissal of 10 senior officials and managers of state-run companies in Chongqing is a young woman named Zhao Hongxia (趙紅霞), who filmed her sexual encounters with the men for use as leverage by her employer, a local businessman seeking to secure construction contracts by any means at his disposal.
Many photos allegedly of Zhao are around (above), but it is later proved to be a picture of a model named Song Wenwen (宋雯雯).
Many photos allegedly of Zhao are around (above), but it is later proved to be a picture of a model named Song Wenwen (宋雯雯).
Photos purportedly of Zhao have been circulating on the internet and later proven to be fakes, while the latest photo posted on Jan 29 shows very little of her face.
The origins of the scandal date back to 2009, when public servants including Lei Zhengfu (雷政富), the party chief of Chongqing’s Beipei district, discovered their illicit trysts had been filmed and appealed to their superiors, who moved to ensure that the recordings did not come to light.
It was not until months after the purge of the municipality’s party chief Bo Xilai (薄熙萊) and his acolytes last year that the videos eventually found their way into the hands of Zhu Ruifeng (朱瑞峰), a Beijing-based journalist who posted them online from November last year.
Zhao was one of a group of young women allegedly in the employ of Xiao Ye(肖燁), a local businessman, who offered the women’s sexual services to the officials to win contracts for major construction projects in the city, with the video recordings kept for the purposes of blackmail in the future if necessary.
Reports suggest that the total number of officials who had sex with Xiao’s young women is actually 25 or even higher. Zhu Ruifeng has claimed to have evidence of 38 officials and managers of state companies caught on tape.
A photo purported to be of Zhao, taken from behind of a young woman looking out of a car window with her hand touching her chin, was posted on the Sina Weibo microblog of Guangzhou’s Southern Metropolis Daily. The newspaper said many of the photos that have been posted on the internet are not Zhao.
Zhao is a resident of Chongqing’s Yubei district and is married with a child, according to the Shandong-based Qilu Evening News. Those who know her say that Zhao is pretty, the newspaper said. The Southern Metropolis Dailyreported that Zhao’s ID card says she was born in 1982 in a village in Chongqing’s Kai county.
She is allegedly younger than the age on her ID and may have been born in 1985. This would make her 23 or 24 at the time she had sex with Lei and other officials, older than 18 as previous reports had claimed.
Zhao met Xiao in 2007 and began to work for him from the end of that year, according to people who claim to be acquainted with her. While having sex with officials was part of her work, she was also reportedly one of Xiao’s lovers. She would use the videos to extort commercial privileges from the officials, allowing him to make a fortune from contracts in the city.
Zhao was reportedly sleeping with another five senior officials. Far from being condemned for her acts, she has been dubbed “a heroine against corruption” by netizens for playing an indirect role in bringing down the corrupt officials.
Zhao was reportedly arrested on Dec 31 on fraud and blackmail charges. Zhu Ruifeng who posted the videos online said he had in his possession at least five more videos, which include higher officials involved in the scandal. A report earlier this week said that Zhu had been arrested at his home in Beijing and taken to Chongqing for questioning.
He was later released but says authorities have destroyed other evidence in the case, which may suggest that the downfall of 10 officials represents damage limitation on the part of the government in a case which may have implicated officials higher up the food chain.
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