Weeding China's garden of
rivals By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING - As a new generation of Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) leaders consolidates its
grip over the world's fastest-growing economy,
fighting corruption has become the new ideological
weapon wielded in power struggles within its
governing ranks.
With the Chinese public
taking to consumption and wealth with zest, rivals
of top communist leaders are no longer purged on
ideological grounds as in past decades. These
days, they are
ostracized because they have
benefited too much and too ostentatiously from the
boom and thus roused public ire.
But while
the new purges are devoid of ideological drama, in
essence they are little different from the power
struggles that marked the CCP's history in the
radical 1950s and 1960s. And the public is well
aware of that.
When Communist Party chief
Hu Jintao fired the Shanghai party boss of
Shanghai, Chen Liangyu, this week for corruption
and other "baleful crimes", few were misled as to
the real reasons for Chen's downfall.
"Hu
is weeding out his rivals one by one," retired
party cadre Lin Kejia said. "It has taken him four
years to get to the people in Shanghai but now he
has finally done it."
The glitzy financial
capital of China has always been the power base of
former CCP leader Jiang Zemin. Before retiring as
party boss, president and military chief, Jiang
had managed to stack the political deck,
appointing dozens of loyal cadres and army
officers to top-line positions.
Over the
past two years Hu, who took over the reins of the
party leadership in 2002, has slowly but
methodically managed to replace Jiang's proteges
with his own, often from within his personal power
base at the Communist Youth League.
Last
year a reshuffle of the State Council allowed Hu
to appoint allies to the Ministry of Labor and
Social Security and the Ministry of Justice. In
March of last year he also replaced Hong Kong's
unpopular chief executive Tung Chee-hwa, of
Shanghai origin, who was also regarded as one of
Jiang's men. Tung was removed because of his
alleged incompetence, not for corruption.
These moves have enabled Hu to portray his
government as being more responsive to public
opinion. The replacement of Tung with the popular
Donald Tsang was well received in Hong Kong.
Yet these personnel changes have also
allowed Hu to begin stamping his own mark on the
policies and the day-to-day governance of the
ruling Communist Party. While his predecessor
promoted outright economic growth and development,
Hu emphasizes helping those who have fallen behind
during the years of economic reform.
One
of Hu's main themes of governance has become the
creation of a "harmonious society", one that
addresses social justice and sustainable
development, ranging from raising farmers' low
incomes to alleviating unemployment, environmental
degradation and corruption.
Both President
Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao have pledged more money
to the countryside, including direct subsidies for
grain producers and increased investment for rural
infrastructure, health care and education.
In practical terms this means that the
central government has sought to squeeze more
revenue from local governments to pay for it.
Beijing has also tried to boost its authority over
the provinces, which suffer particularly strongly
from corruption. The old-regime provincial
governors and party chiefs have built up a strong
network of patronage in their regions, using
China's market reforms to reward followers.
CCP-watchers here believe that purged
Shanghai party boss Chen Liangyu had clashed with
Hu over economic policy, with Chen pressing to
continue the runaway growth that has brought boom
times to his fief.
Shanghai is also the
one bastion of Jiang's influence that had remained
largely unscathed in Hu's power reshuffles - until
this year when party investigators and auditors
descended on the financial hub and began a massive
probe into the city's alleged misuse of pension
funds.
"Everybody in the party has been
waiting to see whether Hu would dare shake
Shanghai," said a Chinese political journalist who
spoke on condition of anonymity. "Shanghai has
been regarded as the ultimate test of Hu's
political skills - would he or would he not manage
to consolidate his power?"
Chen was fired
this week for corruption discovered in the
two-month probe. He is alleged to have misused
Shanghai's US$1.2 billion pension fund. "Chen's
punishment fully demonstrates the central [CCP]
committee's resolution to build a clean party and
to fight corruption," the state-run Xinhua News
Agency said in a dispatch.
Chen, who sat
on the 24-member, all-powerful politburo of the
party, is the highest-ranking party official to be
purged in more than a decade. Investigators have
warned that the corruption probe could net other
senior party cadres.
"With the deepening
of the investigation, other people might be
involved," Gan Yisheng, general secretary of the
CCP's discipline inspection commission, said at a
press briefing in Beijing.
Other
high-profile political crackdowns have taken place
in recent months, all ostensibly on charges of
corruption. In Beijing, Liu Zhihua, vice mayor in
charge of Olympic Games-related projects, was
sacked for alleged corruption and "bad morals". In
August, Tianjin's chief prosecutor, Li Baojin, was
dismissed for "severe breach of discipline".
And in Shanghai two months ago, the head
of the city's social-security fund was sacked for
improper lending of social-security money, which
led to the investigation of Chen. On Thursday, a
spokeswoman for the Shanghai government confirmed
that Sun Luyi, deputy secretary general of the
general office of the Communist Party's Shanghai
committee, was under investigation in relation to
Chen's case.
All firings have been made
public and trumpeted by the propaganda machine.
