The Women in Power: Keyu Jin, Ghislaine Maxwell, and Whistleblower Virginia Giuffre
Jolted down below sections here and there the past one month; I want to use the to discuss the notion of power, through some women’s stories.
Keyu Jin: China’s “Royalty” Economist
China has abolished royalty since 1911, but China still has “royalty”. It wasn’t China had any de jure royal titles, but representatives with royal status. In fact, “royal” status is not a crown, but the control of heritage, prestige, and capital. This does not happen in China solely, but prevails beyond.
Keyu Jin, the 43 year old economist that once served as an Associate Professor in LSE from 2017 to 2024, is one of the most elite intellectuals China could offer in the West dominated academic world. She is beautiful, eloquent, and witty. She was born to a establishment family, as her father is also China’s top diplomat Liqun Jin, who was AIIB’s founding president from 2016 to 2026.
Jin was the ultimate dragon lady - strong, powerful, and mysterious. Born to a well-to-do family, she also worked hard and thus able to climb the echelon quickly. She was so charming that in the Epstein file, Larry Summers complained to Epstein how could he bed her “again”, for which Epstein replied with regretful condolences.
Recently, Jin came trended again in China as after Summers, Jin was exposed to birth a child for a heavily indebted Zhejiang businessman. Despite of his busted wealth, he was born humble and was in nowhere comparable to Jin in terms of prestige and family background. What’s more, man was said to father 9 children with his wife and others and Jin was only one of the girlfriends. Jin helped host their daughter’s one year anniversary, bringing together some rich and powerful Chinese networks to invest in the man’s project. Man’s project failed more miserable than your wage raise; the rich and powerful men’s millions evaporated along with their connection to him.
The scandal bursted in China and netizens were puzzled. People wonder why China’s academic diva, one that owns wealth, prestige, establishment rank, and knowledge, ended up being the side chick Z of a village boy that does not even have real money.
In a pyramid society where men hold absolute power (this applies globally), there are very few men who could realistically stand beside a top-tier woman as an equal partner. Those richer than her lack her power. Those with both money and power are older than her father. The young and wealthy are ugly, and possibly already cheat with 98 women. Money, power, beauty, talent… any one of these can already make a lady’s Valyrian sword. To have all four, and still be young? China only had one lady in the past century. Even Mei-lin Soong met the powerful Chiang Kai-Shek only after he reached middle age; after all, he was not as powerful when he was younger. Chiang and Soong were the platinum level of glamorous “power couple” of China and held the record still in year 2026.
Without Soong’s luck at birth, women like us in peaceful times usually come cross old dudes.
For top-tier women, choosing a partner is extremely difficult. For top-tier men, not necessarily. For example, China’s pop superstar JJ Lin announced his juvenile looking girlfriend of 20 years younger. Like many other Chinese male pop superstars, they ended up marrying young women that look like the result of the same surgeon - innocent and ignorant like a snowflake. The male top guns seem to be more tolerant and desensitized to younger partners; after all, what matters is the vagina and nothing else. But for a young female top gun, a handsome but shallow partner may feel empty. Since she is “marrying down” anyways, then love itself becomes a rather simple game as she likes. Why would we think that Keyu would give a damn about others pointing fingers at her love life?
Interestingly, I posted about Jin one time when Larry Summers was exposed. I cited mainstream publications and mostly discussed my own experiences and women navigating old men’s circle. Shortly afterward, I was reported on Chinese platform by her or her boyfriend’s team. I took the post down. This time, I also see other bigger bloggers having similar experiences. It made me feel like may be I do also have some influences that she or her boyfriend took the time to report me.
Nevertheless, I am not anti–Keyu. I admire her. Despite being born into Chinese elite circles, in a global system largely dominated by the West, she remains structurally disadvantaged. Reaching the center of such a circle as a Global South woman requires passing not five hurdles, but five hundred. Like all powerless netizens, I merely fell victim to a habit called gossip. In a system where overturning the table is nearly impossible, perhaps ordinary people deserve a small space for amusement. After all, cogs do not gossip, so perhaps gossip is that final piece of consolation to prove that we are not yet cogs.
Ghislaine Maxwell: A Woman More Sinister Than Epstein
Compared to Keyu Jin, I want to write more about another trending figure: Ghislaine Maxwell. I do not mean to compare them. It’s just they are trending together and I am a lazy person. They were both born into wealth, yet their trajectories diverged. Maxwell is a convicted felon. Jin, as far as we know, has not committed crimes of that magnitude.
Each release of Epstein documents has toppled one of our childhood idols in elite circles. My idol Chomsky also fell, yet most power holders remain intact. Have you watched the Davos this year? During Davos, demand for escorts rises. The appetite for women and girls has never disappeared. In elite circles, this is nothing new.
What I struggle to comprehend is how Maxwell, as a woman, could facilitate the destruction of young girls. Adult women may compete ruthlessly with each other. But when facing younger girls, women often protect and uplift them. To lure inexperienced girls into exploitation - transferring them among powerful men - requires a level of cruelty I struggle to fathom.
If you watch Maxwell’s or Epstein’s interviews, you see something chilling: they do not believe themselves evil. They may not deny their crimes, but neither do they acknowledge crimes. To them, it was a simple Economics 101. There was a demand, and all they did was to create the supply. They did not comprehend that they were terribly corrupted; maybe in their heart they felt they could still ascend to Heaven.
Maxwell was the youngest daughter of British media tycoon Robert Maxwell. Educated at Oxford, she moved around elite London and New York circles. Her British “poshness” disarmed suspicion among young girls. Without her, Epstein’s operations likely would not have functioned so smoothly. In 2021, she was convicted in the United States on charges related to sex trafficking of minors and remains happily ever behind the bar.
Some argue her moral collapse stems from childhood trauma. But what kind of defect allows one to destroy so many children’s lives without remorse? Her remorse does not direct at Epstein files’ victims, but at the powerful networks she once trusted, as they turned their back on her and stopped granting her protection, status, and luxury.
Virginia Giuffre: Why Women Fight
Virginia Giuffre was one of the young women recruited into Epstein’s circle. At 17, she encountered Maxwell. Trusting her, she entered what was framed as massage training but was actually sexual exploitation.
Years later, as a mother, she became one of the first to speak publicly and confront Epstein in court. At 17, how much does one truly understand? When I was 17, my brain was the size of a peanut. Only after 25, I began to gradually grasp how the world is ruled in an awful way. Yet young girls before adulthood fell victim to Epstein and his network.
The men these girls served wore suits and titles. Some had power, some money, some divine blessings. In their hands lie the life and death, prosperity and despair of millions. Yet behind closed doors, they were hollow. In the quiet of night, stripped of titles, they had no power, no money, no divine and they had to destroy young girls to remind themselves of their existence.
Once, a friend suggested I move closer to elite circles. I joked: to become the second person in command, you need ten years in the house, ten years in the field, and ten as a convicted felon. The friend joked he would come visit me during those felon years.
The Chinese classic Zhuangzi, which is considered the second best classic in Taoism, stated one story of the nonchalant master Zhuangzi. King Wei of Chu invited Zhuangzi to serve as his minister. Zhuangzi stood holding his fishing rod and said: I have heard that in the Kingdom of Chu there is a sacred turtle that has been dead for three thousand years and is enshrined in the ancestral temple. Tell me, would that turtle rather be honoured as a sacred relic, or would it prefer to be alive, dragging its tail freely through the mud?
This world is, at its core, a makeshift troupe. The elites who manage billions in capital and the lives of millions are not fundamentally different. Your project meeting may concern a frustrating assignment - if the OKR is not met, you lose money. Their project management determines who rises and who falls; if their KPI fails, millions of lives are displaced or killed.
People within the power circles believe power would prevail, but this hierarchy carries little intrinsic meaning. What do “ranks” and “power” actually measure? What is the real metric? In reality, no one is wearing clothes - and there is no need to pretend that they are.
Thus Keyu Jin’s scandal may not be as mind-blowing as we imagine. And Maxwell’s crimes, while horrifying to ordinary people, are merely a passing gust within the elite circle. Law, morality, and religion have always been tools to regulate commoners; they rarely reach the elites unless they are attacked by internal rivals. When Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested, I felt happy for the late Giuffre. It took a thousand women accusing a powerful man over the course of ten years to finally bring one down. Even then, those who fall are not brought down by commoners’ pursuit.
In the historical assassination of Ma Xinyi in the late Qing dynasty, was it truly Ma that was assassinated? What was attacked was the powerful ministers, and yet no minister, however powerful, could ever surpass Empress Dowager Cixi.
Epstein died in prison. We should have long known that beneath the masks is all void.
*I want to also mention that Gisele Pelicot recently published a book. No one would want to reopen her trauma repeatedly. In the Pelicot case, perpetrators sought anonymity — though they were criminals. I have watched many interviews of Giuffre and Pelicot. Their calm repetition of their stories reflects immense courage. If they do not stand up for themselves or for the girls after, today’s the victim is her, tomorrow it will be the daughters and sisters of the world. Power is a battlefield, and she begins at the bottom with only a spoon. Yet she must fight. If she does not fight, she remains a slave to power. Only through resistance does possibility emerge.
