Hu
purge nets Shanghai's biggest
fish By Wu Zhong, China
Editor
"Qin Yu's arrest clearly serves
as a warning that Chen [Liangyu ] himself might be
next on the hit-list." - Shanghai Gang losing power
struggle , Asia Times Online,
September 1
HONG KONG - The Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) has sacked Chen Liangyu as
Shanghai's party chief for his alleged involvement
in the misuse of the city's social security fund.
The move shows that President Hu Jintao
now firmly has an upper
hand
in the power struggle with the so-called "Shanghai
Gang" that is widely said to have the backing of
Hu's predecessor, Jiang Zemin.
Hu will now
be on a position to launch a major personnel
reshuffle at the party's 17th National Congress
next year to further consolidate his power. The
removal of Chen will also strongly enhance the
authority of the power center in Beijing to rein
in disobedient regional officials.
Chen,
60, was one of 24 members of the politburo, the
power core of China, and thus becomes the
highest-ranking official to have been netted in a
nationwide crackdown on official corruption in
more than a decade. Chen was suspended from his
posts as politburo member and member of the CCP
Central Committee, in addition to losing the
Shanghai post.
The decision to sack Chen
was made by the politburo in a meeting on Sunday
which discussed "a preliminary investigation
report on Chen's problems", the state-run Xinhua
News Agency said on Monday. The party's central
commission for discipline inspection will continue
to investigate Chen's case.
"Whoever it
is, no matter how high their position, anyone who
violates party rules or national law will be
severely investigated and punished," the Xinhua
report said, citing the central leadership's
decision.
After Xinhua dispatched the
news, Chen's name, picture and resume were
promptly removed from the official websites of
Xinhua and the Shanghai government.
The
report follows weeks of speculation about Chen's
political future after his former secretary, Qin
Yu, Shanghai's Baoshan district's governor, was
removed from his post in August for his alleged
role in the handling of the social security fund.
Qin had worked as Chen's personal
secretary for years and was implicated in the
embezzlement of 3.2 billion yuan (US$404 million)
of Shanghai's social security fund.
The
Xinhua report said that according to preliminary
investigations, Chen was also involved in other
discipline violations, such as helping to further
the economic interests of illegal entrepreneurs,
protecting his staff who had severely violated
laws and discipline and furthering the interests
of family members by taking advantage of his
official posts.
Although the Xinhua report
did not give names, it appears to confirm
long-time speculation that Chen had been
hand-in-glove with disgraced Shanghai property
tycoon Zhou Zhengyi. Zhou obtained
multibillion-yuan bank loans and valuable downtown
land because of his close ties with municipal
authorities.
Chen is thought to have
protected Zhou after the tycoon was arrested. Zhou
was finally brought to justice in 2003, but he was
only found guilty of "manipulating stock prices
and misreporting registered capital", for which he
received a three-year jail sentence. By contrast,
the former president of the Bank of China (Hong
Kong), Liu Jinbao, implicated in the same case,
was eventually given a suspended death sentence by
a court in Changchun, the provincial capital of
Jilin province in northeastern China.
New face for Shanghai Shanghai
Mayor Han Zheng, 52, has been appointed by the
politburo as acting Shanghai CCP chief, Xinhua
said.
Han started his political career as
a Chinese Communist Youth League cadre in
Shanghai. Hu himself was the number one leader of
the league in the early 1980s and as such it is
said he is strongly in favor of promoting former
officials of the league to key posts.
Other members of the "Shanghai Gang" have
rushed to distance themselves from Chen. Xinhua
reported that Vice Premier Huang Ju, one of the
nine members of the politburo standing committee,
on Monday issued an "instruction" that the
management of social security funds should be
under closer supervision. This despite his being
under treatment for cancer of the pancreas. Huang
was Chen's predecessor and is seen as a key member
of the "Shanghai Gang".
The timing of the
announcement of Chen's removal is intriguing. The
party's policy-making central committee is to hold
a plenum in October or early November. On top of
its agenda is to set the parameters for the
leadership reshuffle in the 17th National Congress
next year. Overseas China-watchers have said that
Jiang was still trying to maintain his influence
by having his proteges appointed to key posts.
Analysts say, however, the removal of Chen
shows that Hu now has the upper hand in this power
struggle, and it is certain that a self-confident
Hu now will be dominant in the reshuffle. In this
sense, the 17th congress will mark the opening of
the Hu era, they say.
In 1995, Chen
Xitong, then a politburo member and Beijing party
chief, was arrested on corruption charges and
later jailed for 15 years. Chen was known for his
disobedience of Jiang after the latter was
appointed as CCP general secretary following the
June 4 Tiananmen crackdown on pro-democracy
protests in 1989. Jiang applied the ancient tactic
of "killing a chicken to scare the monkey" to rein
in officials by harshly punishing the defiant Chen
Xitong.
And now Hu has followed suit by
making Chen Liangyu a "chicken" to rein in
regional officials.
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