The millionaires are still celebrating on Shanghai's waterfront promenade.

In the fine Hyatt Hotel, nobody is put up against the wall on this big gala evening, unlike 70 years ago when the communists took power in China's stronghold of commerce.

Hendrik Ankenbrand

Business correspondent for China based in Shanghai.

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In far-off Beijing, the propaganda may stir up anger against “bloodthirsty capitalists” again, in the Shanghai ballroom, where the charity dinner reaches its climax, diamonds and Rolex sparkle as ever on people who are beautiful or rich or both. Only in the glass, the economic power elite agree, does it taste suspiciously of the bad old days. The wine served, a sugary juice from the vineyards of Catalonia, is a cheek in view of the entrance fee of the equivalent of 700 euros per cover. In the French wineries, which quite a few of those present call their own, such a product led to the farewell to the chef de culture.

On the other hand, the evening should benefit the needy children from distant regions, to whom a foundation belonging to the Disney Group has so far granted 200 wishes.

Five-year-old Dingding, who has leukemia, wanted to look like Frozen Elsa and was dressed up with a blonde wig in a first-class beauty salon at the donors' expense.

Little Chenxuan from Henan Province, 1000 kilometers away, where the average income is only a third of the amount in Shanghai, has had a heart disease since birth and wants to meet Briar, a cartoon bear.

“Common prosperity” is the new socialism

On the stage in the hall, 30-meter-high dragon sculptures are auctioned for tens of thousands of euros for a good cause. If a guest raises his bidder sign, seconds later he is surrounded by an applauding crowd of young hostesses until the atmosphere is boiling. The fact that the Communist Party has recently begged China's rich to donate to those who have barely benefited from the country's rapid rise is something that the guests of the Make a Wish Gala want to follow.

The auction that evening will bring in around 2 million yuan for a good cause, the equivalent of 280,000 euros. In the year before the pandemic broke out, Chinese aid agencies received around 150 billion yuan in donations ($ 24 billion). Compared to the $ 450 billion in donations that same year in the United States, the charity in the People's Republic, where the social safety net is even more holey, is a joke.

Because more and more people in China have the feeling that they cannot make it to the top, the rich should now give up, demanded Xi Jinping, who has just passed the party in a “historic resolution” with his plan in line with Marx, Lenin and Mao has asked: “Common prosperity” is the title of the new socialism that Xi has been proclaiming since this summer.

It is about letting more citizens reap the fruits of economic growth, increasing taxes and taking action against “excessive incomes”.

Xi later added that his goal was not “uniform egalitarianism”.

But by then it was already too late.