The spoils system, for all the efforts to keep a lid on it, poses a fundamental challenge to the legitimacy of the Communist Party. As the state’s business has become increasingly intertwined with a class of families sometimes called the Red Nobility, analysts say the potential exists for a backlash against an increasingly entrenched elite. They also point to the risk that national policies may be subverted by leaders and former leaders, many of whom exert influence long after their retirement, acting to protect their own interests.

Chinese officials and their relatives rarely discuss such a delicate issue publicly. The New York Times made repeated attempts to reach public officials and their relatives for this article, often through their companies. None of those reached agreed to comment on the record.

DreamWorks and Microsoft declined to comment about their relationship with Mr. Jiang.

A secret United States State Department cable from 2009, released two years ago by the WikiLeaks project, cited reports that China’s ruling elite had carved up the country’s economic pie. At the same time, many companies openly boast that their ties to the political elite give them a competitive advantage in China’s highly regulated marketplace.

A Chinese sportswear company called Xidelong, for example, proudly informed some potential investors that one of its shareholders was the son of Wen Jiabao, according to one of the investors. (A private equity firm, New Horizon, that the son, Wen Yunsong helped found invested in the company in 2009, according to Xidelong’s Web site.) “There are so many ways to partner with the families of those in power,” said one finance executive who has worked with the relatives of senior leaders. “Just make them part of your deal; it’s perfectly legal.”

Worried about the appearance of impropriety and growing public disgust with official corruption, the Communist Party has repeatedly revised its ethics codes and tightened financial disclosure rules. In its latest iteration, the party in 2010 required all officials to report the jobs, whereabouts and investments of their spouses and children, as well as their own incomes. But the disclosure reports remain secret; proposals to make them public have been shelved repeatedly by the party-controlled legislature.

The party is unlikely to move more aggressively because families of high-ranking past and current officials are now deeply embedded in the economic fabric of the nation. Over the past two decades, business and politics have become so tightly intertwined, they say, that the Communist Party has effectively institutionalized an entire ecosystem of crony capitalism. “They don’t want to bring this into the open,” said Roderick MacFarquhar, a China specialist at Harvard University. “It would be a tsunami.”

Critics charge that powerful vested interests are now strong enough to block reforms that could benefit the larger populace. Changes in banking and financial services, for instance, could affect the interests of the family of Zhu Rongji, China’s prime minister from 1998 to 2003 and one of the architects of China’s economic system. His son, Levin Zhu, joined China International Capital Corporation, one of the country’s biggest investment banks, in 1998 and has served as its chief executive for the past decade.