MCLC: senior official under scrutiny

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: senior official under scrutiny
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (9/1/13):
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/world/asia/senior-chinese-official-is-inv
estigated-for-graft.html

Senior Chinese Official Falls Under Scrutiny as Some Point to Larger
Inquiry
By CHRIS BUCKLEY and JONATHAN ANSFIELD

HONG KONG — The Chinese Communist Party announced Sunday that a senior
official responsible for overseeing state-owned corporations was under
investigation, and people with knowledge of that case and many others said
that, according to senior officials, the inquiries were part of a larger
corruption investigation encroaching on the retired chief of the domestic
security apparatus.

The former security chief, Zhou Yongkang, stepped down last year from the
Politburo Standing Committee, the party’s top decision-making body, after
years as one of the most powerful and divisive figures in Chinese
politics. The investigations swirling around him appear to be part of the
boldest efforts yet by China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, to consolidate his
authority, convince officials he is serious about deterring corruption and
extinguish Mr. Zhou’s lingering influence.

The senior official under scrutiny, Jiang Jiemin, the director of the
State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, “is
suspected of grave violations of discipline and is currently under
investigation,” said a brief statement issued by Xinhua, the main state
news agency. The term “violations of discipline” almost invariably refers
to corruption or abuses of power.

Mr. Jiang is the most senior central official and first full member of the
elite Central Committee to be publicly singled out on such charges under
President Xi, who came to power in November vowing to stamp out corruption
and extravagance by Chinese officials. There has been no public
announcement about any investigation of Mr. Zhou, who is a much more
powerful figure, even in retirement.

Before his appointment in March to the assets commission, which supervises
China’s biggest state conglomerates, Mr. Jiang was the general manager and
then the chairman of the China National Petroleum Corporation, where four
senior managers were also removed on similar charges last week. Mr.
Jiang’s ouster was so abrupt that throughout Sunday his picture and
speeches remained on the commission’s Web site even after the state news
media announced the inquiry. By Monday, content about Mr. Jiang had been
removed from the site.

Mr. Jiang’s downfall appears to follow a pattern related to anticorruption
inquiries against officials who rose in the footsteps of Mr. Zhou, 70, who
worked at the China National Petroleum Corporation and in Sichuan, also
the scene of an expanding corruption investigation. Four people with
knowledge of the inquiries, each citing comments by senior officials, said
those investigations were linked to a larger, secretive inquiry in which
officials had detained or questioned a son and associates of Mr. Zhou.

“It makes logical sense that this is aimed at Zhou,” said Chen Ziming, a
political commentator in Beijing. “It’s all too concentrated, all follows
this same line to him. China National Petroleum Corporation and Sichuan
are both places he worked. It’s a step by step process, questioning people
associated with him, former secretaries and so on.”

The South China Morning Post
<http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1300525/zhou-yongkang-former-securi
ty-tsar-linked-bo-xilai-faces-corruption-probe>, a Hong Kong newspaper,
reported Friday that Mr. Zhou was under investigation. Chinese Web sites
that focus on news and rumors have also said that an investigation is
under way.

The four people who spoke to The New York Times — a former senior
anticorruption investigator, a Chinese businessman with high-level
connections, a political analyst with ties to senior officials and a
businesswoman with family ties to Chinese elites — spoke on the condition
of anonymity because of the risk of recriminations for discussing
secretive political decisions.

“The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection has established a case
group to deal with Zhou Yongkang,” said the former anticorruption
official, who cited a conversation in recent days with a central
government security official. The former official said that the
investigators looking into corruption in Sichuan had questioned Zhou Bin,
Mr. Zhou’s son and a businessman. But he had not heard of any
interrogation of Zhou Yongkang.

An investigation focused on Mr. Zhou would be a departure from the
unspoken norm that Politburo Standing Committee members, including retired
ones, are immune from investigations on corruption charges.

“They’re getting closer and closer to him, one step at a time,” said the
former official, who likened the investigation to one against Chen
Liangyu, the former party chief of Shanghai, who was toppled in 2006 and
sentenced to 18 years in prison in 2008, after investigations of his
family members, subordinates and associates. “I don’t think they’ve
reached a decision yet whether to take down Zhou Yongkang himself.”

Mr. Zhou started his career in the oil sector and rose to become general
manager of the China National Petroleum Corporation. From 1999 to 2002, he
served as party secretary of Sichuan Province, where dozens of officials
and businessmen have been detained or questioned since late last year as
part of corruption investigations led by the party’s anticorruption agency.

The officials removed last week after being accused of “violations of
discipline” include Li Hualin, an oil executive. He is a former aide to
Mr. Zhou, according to two people familiar with the case. Two officials
under investigation in Sichuan, Li Chuncheng and Guo Yongxiang, rose
through the ranks while Mr. Zhou was party chief there.

“There are a lot of indications that point in the direction that they’re
going after Zhou Yongkang,” said Andrew Wedeman
<http://www.chinacenter.net/about/team/andrew-wedeman/>, a professor of
political science at Georgia State University who studies corruption in
China.

Mr. Zhou’s influence has also been a source of contention among elites.
Last year, many observers said Mr. Zhou was overly protective of Bo Xilai,
the former politician who was tried recently on charges of corruption,
embezzlement and abuse of power in an effort to cover up his wife’s role
in a murder.

Mr. Zhou was weakened by Mr. Bo’s fall and its reverberations. Mr. Bo said
in his recent trial that the commission under Mr. Zhou ordered him to take
steps to cover up his former police chief’s flight to an American
consulate.

The Chinese businessman, citing an official in the party leadership’s main
office, said the investigations might not lead to criminal charges against
Mr. Zhou himself or his relatives. In China, senior officials usually face
police investigations only after party investigators have finished their
inquiries and political leaders have decided whether to seek criminal
punishment.

To go forward with the investigation, the Communist Party leader, Mr. Xi,
secured the approval of senior officials, including retired figures like
Jiang Zemin, the party leader who stepped down from that post in 2002, the
businessman said.

Li Weidong, a former magazine editor in Beijing who closely follows party
affairs, said, “I think it’s certain that the investigators received
authorization to look into Zhou Yongkang’s cronies and family, but I’m
very skeptical that Zhou would ever be punished.” He added: “I think
they’ll use this to break his influence — to go against his people, but
not him. He knows too much, and that would be too dangerous for Xi.”
Multiple attempts to contact Mr. Zhou’s son, Zhou Bin, have been
unsuccessful, and Mr. Zhou himself is unreachable, like other members of
China’s party elite.

It is unclear whether Mr. Zhou has been detained; party authorities
monitor the movements of all retired senior officials, even when there are
no allegations of misdeeds. Calls to the State-Owned Assets Supervision
and Administration Commission and the Central Commission for Discipline
Inspection were not answered.

Chris Buckley reported from Hong Kong, and Jonathan Ansfield from Beijing.
Edward Wong contributed reporting from Beijing.