Page 1 of
3 Crisis
closes in on China's inner
circle By Chris Stewart
Zhou Yongkang, a member of China's ruling
Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) and head of the
country's 1.5 million-strong police force, is the
latest and most senior leader to fall in the
battle for control of the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) if rumors of his downfall have any
substance. It was certainly a fall foretold.
Rumors late last week of Zhou's crash from
grace came after talk of an attempted coup in
Beijing last Monday night or early on Tuesday,
supposedly linked to his protege Bo Xilai, former
party boss of the strategically important
Chongqing municipality and until his dismissal
this month a contender to succeed Zhou on the PSC
when he steps down in November.
Bo's
dismissal, announced on March 14, was "the most
important political event in China in more than
two decades"; that is, since
the party schism that
opened over the crackdown of Tiananmen Square
protests in 1989. He is now reportedly under
arrest, though still a member of the 25-strong
politburo, the stepping stone to the PSC. Any
denunciation of Zhou would overshadow those events
by a large margin. [1-3]
Existing PSC
members have only until October to decide, with
consultation down the line, on seven replacements
to the nine-member body for approval by more than
2,000 delegates at the 18th National Congress of
the CCP.
Vice President Xi Jinping, as
things stand, is the presumptive president, Vice
Premier Li Keqiang presumptive prime minister, in
a once-in-a-decade change of the top two PSC
posts. Only two, perhaps three, of the remaining
vacancies are considered still unsettled. About
70% of the members of the Central Military
Commission and the executive committee of the
State Council, or cabinet, will also be changed.
Deep divisions exist in the PSC and the
country at large over what the new government
should do with its vast new wealth, and who should
get their hands on it over the next 10 years. Zhou
is reported to control the state monopoly of the
oil sector as well as being head of the Political
and Legal Committee. [4, 5]
The stakes
could not be higher. Bo's downfall alters the
balance of political forces involved in the
selection process. Effective removal of Zhou,
close to still powerful former president Jiang
Zemin, could be akin to knocking over the
chessboard. The future strength of putative
president Xi Jinping, like Bo a "princeling" - son
of a revolutionary - may be undermined.
The influence of Jiang, a promoter of
the careers of Zhou, Bo and Xi, is being questioned
in full public view. Coup rumors, however
credible, ring truer by the day - on Friday, army
officials in Shaanxi province west of Beijing called on
the People's Liberation Army to unite behind President
Hu Jintao. [6]
The March 19 'coup' -
real, attempted or non-existent? Stock and
bond market traders were among the first to hear
of a Beijing "coup" early last Tuesday, March 20,
thanks to reports sent out by, among others,
United States market website Nasdaq.com, which at
4:53 am New York Time (09:55 GMT) identified
"rumors" of a coup without saying where it got the
information.
An hour later, at 10.41 GMT,
fxstreet.com reported the same rumors in its
"Morning Wrap" of breaking news for market
traders, this time citing "Epoch Times" as the
source, though failing to mention that Epoch
Times' own source was another financial writer, Li
Delin, "who is on the editorial board of
Securities Market Weekly and lives in Dongcheng
district of Beijing". [7, 8]
The prospect
of a coup attempt in the world's second-biggest
economy should have stunned markets - but they
appear to have been unimpressed, given the absence
of any physical sign of military activity in the
capital.
Shares traded in Shanghai fell a
mere 1.4%, although a 10 basis point jump in the
cost of buying insurance on Chinese government
debt and a 15% surge in the volume of shares
traded, the most since November 9, indicated some
traders were hewing to the market dictum of "buy
on the rumor, sell on the news". [9]
Bo Xilai's
name has since mid-February been linked by Epoch
Times to a coup plot and it identified Zhou as
necessarily the next to fall. (At the time of
writing, Zhou was seen on Friday, March 23, but
failed to meet visiting Indonesian President
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Saturday, despite the
previous day anticipating a discussion.) [10]
Epoch Times reports are treated warily by
the mainstream press for several reasons. Not
least, it is backed by the Falungong spiritual
group. Its teachings can be as beyond the
non-believer's comprehension as those of any
faith. The group also claims Bo and his former
police chief Wang Lijun led a brutal (and award-winning)
campaign of repression of the Falungong, including
torture and live organ transplants, after
then-president Jiang banned the group, with its
membership of millions, in the late 1990s. [11]
The Falungong has strong support in the
US Congress (see below), and still has large
numbers of adherents in China subject to arrest
for practicing their beliefs.
Epoch Times,
in short, has an ax to grind. Its reports
noticeably differ from mainstream publications in
not favoring labels such as "rightist",
"ultra-left", "charismatic" and so forth, to
explain complex affairs. It seems to eschew the
tag "reform", perhaps given Falungong's insights
into how the CCP works. (For a graphic explanation
of the pointlessness of these labels in the
present context, see [12]).
The thread that Epoch Times runs through the CCP
maze goes like this. A coup, initially timed for
early next year, was to target presumptive president Xi
Jinping after he succeeded Hu Jintao in November's
shake-up. [13] By the end of this year, Bo was to
have followed Zhou Yongkang into the PSC, taking
control of the public security forces, which would
help supply the post-handover coup firepower.
Implicitly upsetting the coup
apple cart, if there was one, was the
intervening denunciation this month of Bo. Events had to
be brought forward, making President Hu and Prime
Minister Wen Jiabao the "coup" targets, as claimed
on Chinese blogs last Tuesday.
Late last
week, Mingjing News, a US-based website said to be
affiliated to the "faction" of former president
Jiang Zemin, opposed to the incumbent president,
came out with its own version of the Bo-Zhou coup
plot "to block the expected succession of Chinese
vice president Xi Jinping", Taiwan's Want China
Times reported on March 22. Jiang has allegedly
called Zhou a traitor for backing Bo, the report
said. [14]
Race to the tape The
present crisis was triggered by the flight of
former Chongqing Public Security chief Wang Lijun
to the US consulate in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan
province adjoining Chongqing, carrying with him
evidence of wrongdoing by Bo, Epoch Times reports,
in line with other media. Its account then
diverges from the trodden path.
Premier
Wen, seeking a way to secure Bo's downfall for
purely political reasons, had initiated
investigation of Wang late in 2011, the website
said on February 15, with the fruits of those
inquiries to be used to undermine Bo.
(Alternatively, He Guoqiang, former Chongqing
party boss and current head of the disciplinary
committee of the central CCP committee, initiated
the probe; Bo previously executed He's Chongqing
police chief.) [15, 16]
Bo got wind of the
investigation, and on February 2 this year
distanced himself from Wang by dropping him from
his post as head of the Chongqing Public Security
Bureau. (After his own downfall, he would have to
go a step further and denounce Zhou to save his
own skin, Epoch Times commented on February 16.
[17]
Four days later, Wang did a runner -
to secure political asylum, if lucky; more
probably to see that (a) the US was made aware of
his anti-Bo evidence, and (b) to ensure that he
would be picked up by Beijing security forces
rather than by the hotly pursuing Bo, in the form
of Chongqing mayor Huang Qifan. [18]
The
secrets Wang carried to the consulate included,
according to Epoch Times, a plan, that also
implicated nationwide police chief Zhou, to stage
a coup against Xi. The evidence included a tape in
which Bo proclaimed in damning and imperial terms
his superiority over the present leadership, the
report said on March 5, citing the "dissident"
Boxun Chinese-language web site:
On the tape, Bo is reported to have
said that former head of the CCP Jiang Zemin is
the "current Empress Dowager Cixi'' - a powerful
and charismatic woman who unofficially but
effectively controlled the Manchu Qing Dynasty
in China for 47 years, from 1861 to 1908.
Bo described current CCP head Hu Jintao
as the "Emperor Xian of Han", who was the last
emperor (reigned 189-220) of the Han Dynasty and
was thought to be nothing but a puppet, with
even Han loyalists abusing his sovereignty.
Bo also talked about [vice president] Xi
Jinping, ticketed to succeed Hu at the 18th
Party Congress later this year. Bo said Xi is
"Liu E'dou," the infant name of Liu Shan, the
second and last emperor of the state of Shu Han
during the Three Kingdoms era of Chinese
history. Liu Shan was commonly perceived as an
incapable, even retarded ruler.
Bo said
it is he that will lead China into its future,
not the current nine incompetent and mentally
retarded members, nor the new "incompetent and
mentally retarded" members selected by the
current members. Bo is referring to the nine
members of the Standing Committee of the
Politburo ... [ 19]
Epoch Times
continues:
The Boxun report went on to say that
Bo Xilai and his wife Gu Kailai had accumulated
8 billion yuan (US$1.3 billion) before they
moved from northeastern Liaoning province to
Chongqing. Bo is said to have now transferred
most of his money to the United States, Canada,
Britain and France.
On February 13,
the PSC agreed to a special investigation task
force into the Wang Lijun affair; Jiang "insisted
on the investigation", Epoch Times reported,
commenting this was understood to be Jiang
severing links to Bo. It cited Mingjing News,
"connected to the political faction headed by
Jiang Zemin" as the source. [20]
At the
time of the decision, Vice President Xi Jinping, a
recognized protege of Jiang, was set to fly to
Washington, where he arrived "late on February 13"
local time after a flight that takes 12 hours
commercially; meaning he had to leave Beijing by
midnight at the latest on February 13. His
involvement in this decision - which could
crucially affect the strength of his political
support on the PSC when president - is not
clear.
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