Xi Jinping’s Quest for Control Over China Targets Even Old Friends
By Chun Han Wong, Oct. 16, 2022, WSJ
Xi Jinping became China’s most formidable leader in decades through a campaign of anticorruption purges that sidelined opponents and suppressed any potential challenge, real or perceived, to his power.
Some political watchers thought the purges would ease once he settled into his role. Ten years into his tenure, his methods have only grown more sophisticated and pervasive.
Targets in the disciplinary crackdown include a retired member of the Communist Party’s top leadership and a sitting Politburo member. Party enforcers punished some 627,000 people for graft and other offenses last year, roughly four times the number in
2012, when Mr. Xi took charge, according to party data.
Mr. Xi now often uses subtler methods as well, such as taking down officials’ associates with disciplinary probes and replacing them with his own protégés, party insiders say. He also reassigns opponents to less important roles, or switches their
portfolios to separate them from their power bases.
Few are beyond Mr. Xi’s reach. That includes one of his oldest friends, Wang Qishan, who became China’s vice president in 2018, a ceremonial sinecure widely seen as a reward conferred by Mr. Xi.
Mr. Wang himself had served as China’s anticorruption czar for five years, when he ran the withering crackdowns that helped Mr. Xi consolidate control in his earliest years in power. Over the past two years, antigraft enforcers have increasingly gone
after people inside Mr. Wang’s political and personal circles.
The party purged two of his associates in 2020—an outspoken property mogul and a senior party functionary. Officials probing a bankrupt Chinese conglomerate took its chairman, a friend of Mr. Wang, into custody last year, then detained Mr. Wang’s
nephew-in-law this spring, according to people familiar with the matter. In April, Beijing opened a corruption case against a veteran banker who had once worked closely with Mr. Wang.
Mr. Wang hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing and has continued appearing publicly at state events. He couldn’t be reached for comment.
By scrutinizing people close to his longtime friend, party insiders say, Mr. Xi is sending a message that he’ll dismantle all potential power centers and intimidate opponents. But because the challenge is indirect, those targeted might not be so
fearful that they’d organize resistance against him.
Mr. Xi’s tactics echo how Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping undermined even party colleagues who didn’t appear to pose serious threats or have ambitions of challenging the leader, historians say. The campaign has helped Mr. Xi alter the architecture of
power in China—and made him seemingly untouchable for now as he looks set to claim a third term as party chief in the coming week, the party insiders say.
The Communist Party’s propaganda department and the Chinese government’s publicity arm, the State Council Information Office, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
A decade ago, Mr. Xi warned that the party faced an existential fight against corruption and ordered all-out efforts to combat the scourge. The highly popular crackdown surprised many within the party with its intensity and persistence. While declaring
success in his antigraft efforts, Mr. Xi has continued to reinvent the campaign, directing party inspectors to police political loyalty and enforce Beijing’s policies.
Mr. Xi’s unrelenting purges could ultimately consume the party. They have antagonized members of the political elite and discouraged lower-level officials from making decisions for fear of running afoul of Beijing. Mr. Xi himself has complained that
bureaucrats are failing to implement his directives as they focus on protecting their careers.
The purges also risk making China’s political system less resilient over time by leaving senior leaders less willing to challenge Mr. Xi and debate policies.
His technique has been honed over his years in power, according to people familiar with the practice. Mr. Xi asks trusted inspectors to quietly prepare hundreds of pages of evidence against a senior official that he wishes to neutralize, they said.
Mr. Xi would pinpoint the official’s weaknesses and build a case that can tar the official’s reputation within the party elite, particularly if the target has a reputation for being honest and competent, the people said.
Sometimes Mr. Xi authorizes investigations against a close associate of a high-ranking official under the pretext of demonstrating the associate’s honesty, thereby making it hard for the senior official to intervene, some of the people said.
If the investigation turns up evidence of corruption, Mr. Xi would raise the case in leadership meetings and the high-ranking official in question would find it difficult to speak against the probe, or would have to expend considerable political capital
to do so, they said.
Mao undercut perceived opponents similarly in an approach known as “digging at the foot of a wall,” according to Joseph Torigian, an assistant professor at American University who wrote a book about power struggles in the Soviet Union and Communist
China.
Like Mao and Deng, Mr. Xi might be thinking that “these people’s usefulness has passed, or are not intuiting what he wants correctly anymore, or he just wants more pliant people in certain positions,” Mr. Torigian said.
Party insiders say Mr. Xi appears to have used some of his subtler approaches against Meng Jianzhu, a former Politburo member and security chief who retired in 2017.
Mr. Meng was a well-regarded official who oversaw the abolishment of the notorious program that China called “re-education through labor,” which herded criminals and dissidents into work camps. Mr. Meng left office with his protégés holding key law-
enforcement posts, leaving him with considerable influence over the party’s security apparatus.
Party investigators have since taken down some of his protégés, helping clear the way for Mr. Xi to put loyalists into key security roles. Efforts to reach Mr. Meng weren’t successful.
In 2018, Chinese authorities detained Meng Hongwei, a vice minister of public security who had worked closely with the elder Mr. Meng (no relation) and served as president of Interpol at the time. The younger Mr. Meng was sentenced to prison for 13½
years on corruption charges in January 2020. He couldn’t be reached. His wife has decried the case as trumped up and politically motivated.
In April 2020, the party announced a probe against Sun Lijun, a law-enforcement veteran and one of the elder Mr. Meng’s top protégés. During his policing career, Mr. Sun held roles overseeing political security before his promotion to vice minister
of public security in 2018.
Mr. Sun allegedly received data collected by the WeChat social-media app from an executive at the app’s developer, Tencent Holdings Ltd., The Wall Street Journal reported last year. Mr. Sun was trying to use WeChat data to monitor conversations among
relatives of senior Chinese officials, and glean information that could benefit himself and Mr. Meng, according to people familiar with the investigation.
The party expelled Mr. Sun in September 2021 and accused him of political and financial wrongdoing. State media identified key members of his alleged “political clique,” including a former justice minister, an erstwhile provincial security czar and
three ex-regional police chiefs—all of whom recently received prison sentences ranging from 14 years to de facto life terms for corruption.
In September, Mr. Sun received a suspended death sentence—effectively a life term in prison—on charges of bribery, stock-market manipulation and illegal possession of firearms. He couldn’t be reached for comment.
Similar tactics were applied to Chen Yuan, the eldest son of Chinese revolutionary elder Chen Yun. The younger Chen—who led state-owned China Development Bank for 15 years, as governor and then chairman, before retiring in 2013—is widely seen as a
leading figure among “princelings,” as descendants of current or former top officials are known. He was once considered more influential within the party elite than Mr. Xi, who is also a princeling.
Party inspectors have opened investigations against more than a dozen of Mr. Chen’s protégés, including at least three former secretaries, in recent years, according to people familiar with the matter. Efforts to reach Mr. Chen weren’t successful.
In the case of Vice President Wang, people familiar with him say he harbors no ambitions to challenge Mr. Xi. Five years senior to the 69-year-old Mr. Xi, Mr. Wang is considered too old to be a viable successor.
Mr. Wang still commands considerable clout independent of Mr. Xi, party insiders and political observers say, and therefore poses a latent threat.
The two have known each other since at least the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution, when they were among millions of urban youth sent to work in the countryside at Mao’s behest.
Widely respected for his record as an economic-policy wonk, banker and politician, Mr. Wang earned the nickname of “fire brigade chief” for his record of troubleshooting political crises. He stepped in as Beijing mayor in 2003 as the capital roiled
from the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. As anticorruption czar, he oversaw thousands of investigations and worked closely with Mr. Xi in managing purges.
Mr. Wang stepped down from the party leadership in 2017. He later became vice president, joined the party’s top foreign-policy commission and continued attending high-level meetings.
Signs of Mr. Wang’s ebbing clout emerged in 2020, when retired property tycoon Ren Zhiqiang, a friend of Mr. Wang, was purged after writing an online essay criticizing Mr. Xi’s handling of Covid-19. Authorities detained Mr. Ren, expelled him from the
party, and sentenced him to 18 years in prison for corruption and other charges.
Less than two weeks after Mr. Ren’s sentencing, the party announced a probe against Dong Hong, a close subordinate of Mr. Wang for much of the past three decades, who took a senior role in the anticorruption crackdown that Mr. Wang ran.
When a Chinese court convicted Mr. Dong for corruption and handed him a suspended death sentence in January, state media reports on the verdict cited Mr. Dong’s past positions working under Mr. Wang, in what party insiders saw as a pointed gesture
toward the vice president.
In 2021, authorities detained another businessman close to Mr. Wang—Chen Feng, chairman and co-founder of HNA Group, a conglomerate based in the island province of Hainan, where Mr. Wang once served as party chief. Mr. Chen’s current whereabouts
couldn’t be determined and he couldn’t be reached for comment.
During Lunar New Year festivities this year, party inspectors detained Mr. Wang’s nephew-in-law, Yao Qing, for investigations related to Mr. Yao’s connections with HNA, according to people familiar with the situation. HNA came to prominence with a
string of big-ticket acquisitions from 2015 to 2017, including stakes in Deutsche Bank AG and hotel chain Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc., before falling into financial trouble that culminated in court-led bankruptcy proceedings last year.
People who know Mr. Yao believe the reasons behind his detention go beyond his HNA connections and serve as a warning to Mr. Wang.
Mr. Yao, who is also the grandson of former Vice Premier Yao Yilin, was released from custody several months later, the people said. It couldn’t be determined if authorities accused Mr. Yao of wrongdoing. He couldn’t be reached.
In April, party inspectors opened a probe against Tian Huiyu, a veteran banker who worked as an aide to Mr. Wang while the latter was the top official at state-run China Construction Bank in the 1990s. The party expelled Mr. Tian in October, accusing him
of corruption, extravagance and misusing his powers for self-benefit. He couldn’t be reached.
Mr. Wang has continued discharging his duties as vice president. In September, he attended the funeral for Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II as a representative of Mr. Xi. Later that month, the party confirmed that Mr. Wang was elected a delegate to its
national congress, now underway.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/xi-jinping-china-anticorruption-11665925166
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)