MCLC: Chongqing delegates to Party Congress announced

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Chongqing delegates to Party Congress announced
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Source: NYT (5/24/12):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/25/world/asia/chongqing-once-led-by-bo-xilai
-chooses-communist-party-conference-candidates.html

Deposed Politician’s City Lists Names for Meeting on China’s Next Leaders
By EDWARD WONG 

BEIJING — The Communist Party branch in Chongqing, the teeming western
municipality once governed by the deposed politician Bo Xilai, has named
candidates for its delegation to a critical party conference in the fall
at which China’s next leadership lineup is expected to be announced. The
list of 50 candidates includes some officials considered allies of Mr. Bo,
but excludes Mr. Bo himself.

Political experts in China are scrutinizing the lists of the candidates
and those already named as delegates to the conference, the 18th Party
Congress, for signs of fallout from the seismic scandal over Mr. Bo.

For example, despite his initial support of Mr. Bo, Zhou Yongkang, a
member of the elite Politburo Standing Committee and overseer of China’s
domestic security apparatus, was named last week to the delegate list from
the Xinjiang region. Some analysts had raised doubts over whether Mr. Zhou
would be invited to attend the party congress, which is to take place here
in Beijing.

Huang Qifan, the mayor of Chongqing, was on the list of Chongqing
candidates, which was released on Monday and reported by the official news
media on Wednesday. Mr. Huang is closely associated with economic policies
promoted by Mr. Bo, though Mr. Huang had already helped formulate many of
those policies in his role as vice mayor before Mr. Bo arrived in December
2007. Mr. Huang became the mayor in January 2010.

The fate of Mr. Huang has been the subject of much speculation since Mr.
Bo was removed in March from his position as the Chongqing party chief and
suspended from the central party’s Politburo in April.

Mr. Bo is under investigation for the ways he used his power, and many
people close to him have been questioned or detained. But with his
appearance on the candidate list, Mr. Huang appeared to have sidestepped
any serious trouble, and was seen as likely to be appointed to the party’s
Central Committee at the Beijing gathering in the fall.

At the last party congress, in 2007, all party secretaries and mayors of
province-level entities, which includes Chongqing, a fast-growing
territory on the Yangtze River with a population of 31 million, were
appointed to the Central Committee, which has about 300 members.

Another official closely associated with Mr. Bo’s policies, Yao Ning, was
also named as a candidate. Ms. Yao was a prosecutor in the case of Li
Zhuang, a lawyer from Beijing who defended a Chongqing businessman during
a crime crackdown started by Mr. Bo. Mr. Li was convicted of suborning
perjury and served 18 months in prison.

Many Chinese intellectuals rallied to Mr. Li’s cause and accused Mr. Bo
and his allies in Chongqing of undermining the legal system.

Ms. Yao was one target of that criticism. This week some liberal Chinese
posted messages on microblogs denouncing her being named to the list of
Chongqing candidates.

Yuan Yulai, a lawyer in Zhejiang Province, wrote on his microblog that Ms.
Yao “went beyond the scope of public prosecution in wantonly vilifying Li
Zhuang” with “false accusations.”

Ms. Yao was not available for comment.

The list of 50 candidates will be winnowed to 41 delegates at the
Chongqing Party Congress, which is scheduled to take place next month
after being pushed back from May because of the recent political
upheavals. The party’s central body in Beijing will appoint one delegate,
making the total from Chongqing 42.

A new party secretary for Chongqing is also expected to be named at the
local congress. Several political observers in Chongqing say the two
favorites are Jiang Yikang, the party chief of Shandong Province, and Zhou
Qiang, the party chief of Hunan Province.

The two men are on opposite sides in the two broad factions of Chinese
elite politics: Mr. Zhou is associated with the Youth League faction, led
by President Hu Jintao, while Mr. Jiang is said to be an ally of Jiang
Zemin, Mr. Hu’s predecessor and the leader of the so-called Shanghai Gang.
The party secretary of Chongqing is expected to get a seat on the
25-member Politburo.

After Mr. Bo was removed from that post, Zhang Dejiang, a vice premier and
ally of Jiang Zemin, was sent to Chongqing as a caretaker party chief. He
is considered a contender for the Politburo Standing Committee, which
rules China by consensus.

That committee has nine members, but there is talk that the number could
be cut to seven. If that were the case, five seats would be up for grabs,
since two current committee members, Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, are
expected to stay on and take over the top two posts in China.

Both have been helped by the scandal, which removed Mr. Bo as a potential
challenger to their hold on power.

Shi Da contributed research.