AP Photo

In a private room of an expensive restaurant in Beijing, a woman exuding sophistication, power and wealth leaned toward her dinner companion who worked at a government-affiliated think tank. "If you join our business project, you will be able to dine together with my husband," the woman, Gu Liping, said. That was in autumn 2007, when Gu’s husband, Ling Jihua, was chief of the General Office of the Communist Party Central Committee, a post comparable to that of Japan's chief Cabinet secretary.