Graft scandals force
Beijing's scrutiny
By Wu Zhong, China Editor
HONG KONG - China's four municipalities directly under the central government -
Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing - recently convened their local party
congresses to elect new municipal party leaders, and there are good reasons
that a larger spotlight than usual is shining on these proceedings.
In China's administrative hierarchy, a municipality is directly under the
central government's control and the equivalent of province. As such, its
leaders are regarded as provincial or ministerial-level
officials. To qualify as a municipality, a city must be big enough and, more
important, politically, economically and/or strategically powerful enough for
the honor. All the municipalities, particularly Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin,
exercise greater political influence than most of the provinces.
Beijing is China's capital, Shanghai is the country's largely commercial
metropolis, while Tianjin is traditionally considered "the gate to the capital"
and a major port in northern China. It has been traditional over the past two
decades for the party secretaries of the three cities also to sit in the
Politburo. Therefore it is almost certain that the newly elected party chiefs
of Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin will become members of the new Politburo at
the Communist Party's 17th National Congress in the autumn.
Liu Qi, the incumbent Beijing party chief and a Politburo member, has been
re-elected for a second term, despite earlier speculation that he might step
down. Xi Jinping and Zhang Gaoli were endorsed as party secretaries of Shanghai
and Tianjin respectively, replacing the disgraced Chen Liangyu and retiring
Zhang Lichang.
Chongqing, within Sichuan province, is the largest and most populous (more than
31 million residents) of the municipalities and also a relatively new one. Home
of the Three Gorges Dam, it was upgraded in 1997 in a bid to facilitate the
dam's construction and to boost the area's economy. Although no Chongqing party
chief has ever sat in the Politburo, it is widely speculated that the
municipality's new party secretary, Wang Yang, a former Communist Youth League
official and a protege of Premier Wen Jiabao, will be the first.
Less attention has been paid to another important development in these four
municipal party meetings. The municipal party congresses have all endorsed
officials chosen by the central leadership to head the cities' anti-graft
commissions.
Shen Deyong, a former member of the party's Central Commission for Disciplinary
Inspection (CCDI) Standing Committee and vice president of the Supreme People's
Court, has been elected as the party's Shanghai Municipal Commission for
Disciplinary Inspection (CDI). Ma Zhipeng, another former member of the CCDI
Standing Committee, is now the secretary of the party's Beijing Municipal CDI.
And Zang Xianfu, an official from the power center, has taken the post as
secretary of the Tianjin Municipal CDI. Xu Jingye, former graft-buster in the
Ministry of Commerce, now is secretary of the Chongqing Municipal CDI.
This is part of a broader reform launched by the party's power center to mend
the loopholes in the country's current anti-corruption system, as reported in
China's flawed fight against corruption (Asia Times Online, December
22, 2006).
There are good reasons for Beijing to begin the reform with the municipalities.
All of them, but Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin particularly, have been troubled
by corruption scandals involving senior leaders.
Former Shanghai party leader and Politburo member Chen Liangyu was the
highest-ranking official netted in the country's anti-graft campaign in more
than a decade when he was sacked last September. Dozens of other Shanghai
officials have been nabbed on corruption charges since Chen's misdeeds came to
light.
In Tianjin, as a corruption investigation into former chief public prosecutor
Li Baojin continues, a more shocking development recently ensued. On June 4,
shortly after the conclusion of the Tianjin municipal party congress, Song
Pingshun, chairman of the Tianjin Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's
Political Consultative Conference, committed suicide shortly before a formal
corruption investigation was to begin.
Song, 62, became the highest-ranking official to kill himself. His suicide
shocked China's political circle and has been compared to a case in Beijing 12
years ago when, in April 1995, Wang Baosen, then executive vice mayor of
Beijing, shot himself to death. Wang's suicide led to an investigation into
then-Beijing party secretary Chen Xitong, who was also a Politburo member. Chen
later was jailed for 16 years for corruption. Although many political analysts
saw Chen's downfall as the result of his power struggle with former president
Jiang Zemin.
Song was a policeman who rose to become Tianjin police chief in the early
1980s, after which he rose as a vice party secretary of the city overseeing law
enforcement from 1998-2003. Both Song and Li Baojin were close proteges of
Zhang Lichang. Zhang, in turn, was a protege of Li Ruihuang, the former Tianjin
party secretary and mayor in the 1980s until he was promoted to the power
center after the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen crackdown. Li was ranked No 4 in the
Politburo Standing Committee before he retired in late 2002.
The investigation into Li, and Song's suicide, may bring bigger scandals to
light. "Given his background, Song must have been fully aware of the outcome of
the investigation into him in order for him to decide to kill himself. Either
the sum of the bribes he took is astronomically huge or he wanted to protect
others," said a Tianjin civil servant.
The corruption investigation in Beijing is currently focused on Liu Zhihua, a
former vice mayor who oversaw land requisition and property development. He has
been kicked out of the party as he awaits prosecution. But Beijing sources say
the powers that be are unlikely to escalate the investigation until after next
year's Summer Olympic Games.
Analysts say a major reason that senior officials in Beijing, Shanghai and
Tianjin were emboldened enough to take bribes was that they thought their
municipality status was protected by their Politburo roles and connections. And
all four cities are also power bases for a number of former and current central
leaders.
But for President Hu Jintao, who sees anti-corruption as a battle concerning
the "life or death" of the Chinese Communist Party, it is even more intolerable
that corruption scandals involving senior officials should occur in the cities
directly under the central government's leadership. If they cannot be
controlled, how can the central government expect to control the provinces?
This may explain why now the power center wants its hand-picked officials to
oversee the municipal anti-graft efforts. In this way, Beijing has a closer eye
on the behavior of the municipality leaders truly to have them "directly under
the central government".
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