Some analysts in China said that political considerations were likely to be the main reason
that Beijing had detained Mr. Wu, pointing to a Communist Party meeting scheduled for late this year at which party officials are to consider changes in leadership.
By detaining Mr. Wu and other high-flying business figures, said Zhang Lifan, a Beijing-based historian
and the son of a food minister under Mao Zedong, Communist Party leaders are sending a powerful message to potential rivals that they won’t brook dissent.
But Anbang often seemed to behave as though the usual informal political guidelines did not apply — possibly
because Mr. Wu was married to a granddaughter of Deng Xiaoping, a major Communist Party figure who was China’s paramount leader in the 1980s.
Anbang said on its website on Wednesday only that Mr. Wu was temporarily unable to fulfill his duties as chairman for “personal reasons.”
Anbang embodies the contradictions of China’s modern economy, with its potentially combustible
mix of risk-taking capitalism and episodically draconian government control.