MCLC: security chief's power to be cut

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: security chief's power to be cut
***********************************************************

Source: The Guardian (8/30/12):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/30/china-cut-power-domestic-securi
ty-chief

China plans to cut power of domestic security chief in party shakeup
Communist leaders want to limit role and scope of successor to powerful
Zhou Yongkang, who is expected to retire this year
By Reuters in Beijing

China's Communist party is considering downgrading the role of domestic
security chief as part of a move to a new and smaller top elite,
reflecting fears that the position has become too powerful, sources say.

Reducing the party's politburo standing committee, the inner council at
the apex of power, from nine to seven members would come as part of a
once-in-a-decade leadership change expected in the next few weeks or
months.

China's domestic security chief, Zhou Yongkang, faces defeat if his
successor does not follow his example and that of recent predecessors by
winning a place at the top table.

Before he was tainted in a succession of scandals that hurt the Communist
party this year, Zhou expanded his role into one of the most powerful and
controversial fiefdoms in the one-party government. He has been on the
standing committee since 2007 while also heading the central political and
legal affairs committee, a sprawling body that oversees law and order
policy.

That double status allowed Zhou to dominate a domestic security budget of
$110bn a year. But the 69-year-old is due to retire along with most
members of the standing committee at the 18th party congress, which will
meet before the end of the year.

Leaders appear likely to rein in Zhou's successor as head of domestic
security by keeping him or her off the smaller standing committee. That
successor would remain a member of the less powerful politburo, which has
24 members ­ returning to a pattern the party kept to for much of the
1980s.

The provisional agreement to shrink the standing committee and in effect
to downgrade the status of Zhou's successor has been rumoured for months
after being planned in secret discussions since July, said six sources
with direct ties to senior leaders and retired party elders.

"As things now stand the political and legal affairs committee secretary
won't be in the standing committee. He'll have to answer to someone in the
standing committee. Basically he won't be his own judge any more," said a
retired party official who remains close to many sitting senior officials.

"I don't think all the people [in the standing committee] have been
decided but it seems clear it will be seven."
He and other sources spoke on condition of anonymity.

Zhou was implicated in rumours that he hesitated in moving against the
politician Bo Xilai, who fell in a divisive scandal. Security forces also
suffered a humiliating failure when they allowed the blind rights advocate
Chen Guangcheng to escape from 19 months of house arrest and flee to the
US embassy in Beijing.

Such fumbles gave the president, Hu Jintao, and his virtually certain
successor, the vice-president, Xi Jinping, a shared motive to put police
forces and domestic security services under closer oversight, said Xie
Yue, a professor of political science at Tongji University in Shanghai.

"It seems quite likely that Hu and Xi have mustered the will to demote the
political standing of the political and legal affairs committee," he said.
"They're taking advantage of the opinion that the committee's reach has
gone too far and that it's created too many problems and scandals."

Since the 1990s China's efforts to stifle crime, unrest and dissent have
allowed the domestic security apparatus ­ including police, armed militia
and state security officers ­ to accumulate power, and the domestic
security budget now outstrips the military's in size.

Two sources said the frontrunner to replace Zhou as central political and
legal affairs committee secretary was Meng Jianzhu, now minister for
public security.