James Kynge

So I thought it was really a fascinating insight.

That's a mystery to me, complete mystery.

I've tried to do this on many occasions.

I mean...

I think every China journalist under the sun has tried to do this.

We've all known for decades that many Chinese companies go to the Cayman Islands, register themselves there, and then effectively get kind of carte blanche.

Nobody knows who they are in reality because they go under the name of a Cayman Islands subsidiary, and then they use that subsidiary as a camouflage to then do whatever they want to do in the world, sometimes buying a company, sometimes...

you know, registering stocks or whatever it may be.

But we have, at least in my experience, it's very difficult or nigh on impossible to get any kind of information on who those companies actually are and then what they did afterwards.

So kudos to these researchers.

You know, this seems to be quite groundbreaking to me.

Well, first of all, I think these two guys, Wei Fenghe and Li Xiangfu, as you said, they are currently, now that they've been sentenced, the most senior Chinese Communist Party officials to be put in prison.

This is a big thing in itself.

And as you rightly say, Alice, although the sentence is death, there is this reprieve for two years.

And in almost all cases, this is then commuted to life in prison.

But I wanted to look at this also to discuss China's penal system.

It may not be a very light topic, but it is a fascinating topic, or at least to look at the highest echelon of that system.

And that is to focus on the jail, the prison that these two former leaders of the Chinese People's Liberation Army will be going to in all likelihood.

That prison is called Chincheng.

It's on the outskirts of Beijing.