Fast-track success of Jiang Zemin's eldest son, Jiang Mianheng, questioned by Chinese academics for years

The rapid rise in China’s academic world of Jiang Mianheng  – eldest son of Jiang Zemin, the nation’s former president and Communist Party chief – raised eyebrows among other academics for years.

Many people suggested nepotism had played a part in the promotion’s of Jiang Mianheng, who retired this week as head of the Shanghai branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Widely regarded as the main man within the nation’s electronic industry clique, he is believed to have controlled telecom giant China Netcom – now part of China Unicom – and other companies.

He was one of the co-founders of the Shanghai-based Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp, which once gained coverage in overseas media after hiring Neil Bush – son of former United States president George Bush, and brother to former US president George W. Bush – as a general consultant.

Jiang Mianheng, who was born in 1952, graduated with a bachelor's degree from Shanghai’s Fudan University.

After joining the Shanghai Institute of Metallurgy he went to the US in 1986 and obtained both his master’s degree and, in 1991, his doctorate, at Drexel University, in Philadelphia; his father made a visit to the university in 1997.

After returning to China in 1993, he become deputy president of the CAS in 1999. He then took on the less high-profile position of head of the Shanghai branch in 2005. In November of 2011, he left his post at the CAS.