Wikileaks - India

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[url="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8184216/WikiLeaks-Chinas-Politburo-a-cabal-of-business-empires.html"]WikiLeaks: China's Politburo a cabal of business empires[/url]

The contact also outlined the scornful factionalism that divided the scions of the old 'red' families – those with revolutionary lineage whose fathers and grandfathers fought to bring the Communists to power in 1949 – and those who had risen up the Party ranks, so-called "shopkeepers".



China's current leaders, President Hu Jintao and prime minister Wen Jiabao, both fall into the latter category, while the putative next leader, 57-year-old Xi Jinping, is the son of a revolutionary hero Xi Zhongxun and often referred to as a 'princeling'.



The US embassy contact said that China's princelings felt they had a "right" to the fruits of the revolution, recalling one family deriding those without revolutionary pedigrees by saying: "While my father was bleeding and dying for China, your father was selling shoelaces".