MCLC: Bo Xilai loyalists detained

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Bo Xilai loyalists detained
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (4/19/12):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/world/asia/bo-xilai-loyalists-are-rounded
-up-in-china.html

Disgraced Chinese Official¹s Loyalists Are Rounded Up for Questioning
By EDWARD WONG 

BEIJING ‹ Officials in critical Communist Party and government posts in
Chongqing who are considered loyalists of Bo Xilai, the city¹s deposed
party chief, are being detained as part of the wide-ranging investigation
into Mr. Bo and his family, according to a Chongqing official and other
people with knowledge of political appointments in the city.

The detentions are part of an attempt by the central Communist Party to
dismantle Mr. Bo¹s support network and build a case against him and his
wife, Gu Kailai, who is under investigation in the killing of a British
businessman, Neil Heywood. Mr. Bo is being investigated for ³serious
disciplinary violations.²

The detentions and, in some cases, replacements of Mr. Bo¹s allies began
soon after party leaders ousted him on March 15 as the Chongqing party
chief, said people in Chongqing and Beijing, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity because of the delicacy of the situation. Some analysts say the
purging of Mr. Bo has presented the party¹s top echelon with its biggest
challenge since the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre in 1989.

The downfall of Mr. Bo, who comes from a prominent revolutionary family
but acquired many enemies in his political career, began when his former
police chief in Chongqing, Wang Lijun, showed up at the United States
Consulate in Chengdu on Feb. 6 with what he said was evidence tying Mr.
Bo¹s family to Mr. Heywood¹s mysterious death in Chongqing last November.

The scandal has occurred just months before party leaders are expected to
announce a new lineup for the top ruling clique, the Standing Committee of
the Politburo. Mr. Bo was jockeying for one of the seats.

The detentions in Chongqing have generally not been reported in the
official news media. Among the Communist officials detained after Mr. Bo
was removed from his post was Wu Wenkang, the deputy secretary general of
the municipal party branch, who was considered one of a handful of people
in the Bo family¹s inner circle, according to businesspeople in Chongqing.

Jiang Weiping, a Chinese journalist living in Canada who came into
conflict with Mr. Bo after writing about him, said Mr. Wu had been close
to Mr. Bo since Mr. Bo¹s tenure as mayor of Dalian, a coastal city in the
northeastern province of Liaoning. Mr. Wu moved to Chongqing after Mr. Bo
became party secretary there in 2007.

Guo Weiguo, a Chongqing police official who was also close to Mr. Bo in
Liaoning Province, was recently detained as well. Senior party officials
have appointed He Ting, a former vice governor of Qinghai Province, to Mr.
Wang¹s old job as police chief. Mr. He previously served as chief of the
Ministry of Public Security¹s criminal investigation department. And Chen
Cungen, the head of the municipal party committee¹s powerful organization
department, was replaced in late March by Xu Songnan, who held the same
job in the Ningxia region.

One Chongqing official said that Xia Zeliang, the party chief of Nan¹an
district in Chongqing, had also been detained. Mr. Heywood¹s body was
found in a hotel in the Nan¹an district, and it was cremated before an
autopsy was performed. The British government said it asked Chinese
officials in mid-February to open an inquiry into Mr. Heywood¹s death
after American officials had informed them of the accusations by Mr. Wang,
the former police chief.

Some people close to Mr. Bo appear to have avoided severe repercussions
for now, including the district party chief Xu Ming, a close adviser of
Mr. Bo¹s whose fate was in question late last month, businesspeople in
Chongqing said. A local news Web site, Hualong, noted that Mr. Xu made an
appearance on April 10 at a meeting of district party officials where he
pledged to support the decisions about Mr. Bo. The same day, the party
announced that Mr. Bo had been suspended from his post in the 25-member
Politburo and from the larger Central Committee, and that Ms. Gu was being
investigated in Mr. Heywood¹s killing.

News organizations in Chongqing have reported in recent days that Mr. Xu
has been appearing at events, signaling that he still has his job and is
not under detention. Mr. Xu was a main architect of the famous ³red song²
campaign that Mr. Bo started in 2008, in which the Chongqing government
urged schools, workers and neighborhood groups to organize singalongs of
Maoist classics.

Another important associate of Mr. Bo¹s whose English name is also spelled
as Xu Ming (the Chinese name has different words) has vanished and is
presumed to be under investigation. This Mr. Xu, 41, is the billionaire
founder and chairman of the Dalian Shide Group, a conglomerate with vast
holdings.

The detention and replacement of officials in Chongqing have taken place
under the watch of Zhang Dejiang, a vice prime minister who was sent from
Beijing to serve as party chief in Chongqing after Mr. Bo¹s ouster. Cheng
Li <http://www.brookings.edu/experts/l/lic.aspx?sc_lang=zh-CN>, an expert
in Chinese politics at the Brookings Institution, said in an interview
with the National Bureau of Asian Research on Wednesday that it was
important to note that Mr. Zhang is an ally of Jiang Zemin
<http://www.nbr.org/research/activity.aspx?id=236>, the former top leader
of China.

Mr. Bo was also considered, in a broad sense, to be an ally of Mr.
Jiang¹s. Mr. Li said the fact that party leaders agreed that one of Mr.
Jiang¹s men should replace Mr. Bo showed that there was no significant
split on the issue between the Jiang faction and the faction led by Hu
Jintao 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/hu_jintao/ind
ex.html?inline=nyt-per>, the current Chinese president and party chief.

³This appointment means that a deal has been made and the top leadership
of the party is united,² Mr. Li said.

Sharon LaFraniere contributed reporting from Chongqing, China, and
Jonathan Ansfield from Beijing. Mia Li contributed research from
Chongqing, and Edy Yin from Beijing.