Some analysts in China said that political considerations were likely to be the main reason<br />that Beijing had detained Mr. Wu, pointing to a Communist Party meeting scheduled for late this year at which party officials are to consider changes in leadership.<br />By detaining Mr. Wu and other high-flying business figures, said Zhang Lifan, a Beijing-based historian<br />and the son of a food minister under Mao Zedong, Communist Party leaders are sending a powerful message to potential rivals that they won’t brook dissent.<br />But Anbang often seemed to behave as though the usual informal political guidelines did not apply — possibly<br />because Mr. Wu was married to a granddaughter of Deng Xiaoping, a major Communist Party figure who was China’s paramount leader in the 1980s.<br />Anbang said on its website on Wednesday only that Mr. Wu was temporarily unable to fulfill his duties as chairman for “personal reasons.”<br />Anbang embodies the contradictions of China’s modern economy, with its potentially combustible<br />mix of risk-taking capitalism and episodically draconian government control.
