By staff reporter Li Qiyan

The president of China National Technical Import & Export Co. (CNTIEC) was detained by the Communist Party disciplinary agency for leaking confidential information.

Caijing learned that Jiang Xinsheng, 54, was detained in the end of 2007 under China’s system of “double regulation,” or shuanggui, an extra-legal form of detention imposed on members of the Communist Party of China and government officials.

Sources familiar with the case told Caijing that Jiang was charged with disclosing bid information to the French nuclear power plant supplier Areva, which participated in a 2004 bid for China’s inland nuclear program. 

In September 2004, the Chinese government launched a bid to select which company would provide “third-generation nuclear technology” for the Sanmen nuclear power project in Zhejiang Province and the Yangjiang project in Guangdong Province. U.S.-based Westinghouse and France’s Areva were the major competitors.

In the end of 2004, an organizing committee for the bid was established by CNTIEC, China National Nuclear Co. and China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group. Jiang, then serving as the president of CNTIEC, was a key member of the committee and participated in the entire negotiation process.

After two years of evaluation, Westinghouse was selected as to take on the projects in Zhejiang and Shandong, but in the following year, Areva won the contract for a different project in Guangdong.

In September this year, Chinese government officially adopted Westinghouse’s AP1000 as national technology standard for future projects in inland regions, a huge victory for the American company.

A source close to Jiang told Caijing that “many people familiar with him were surprised by his detention, as he has been quite honest and not in lack of money.”

Jiang last appeared in public in November 2007 to sign a contract for the Uzbekistan Tukumachi-Angren Railway Electrification Project as a representative of CNTIEC.

Caijing learned that several other officials also have been detained, and that Jiang’s fall may just be the first to shake China’s nuclear power industry.