Los Angeles Times
BEIJING The Chinese government said Wednesday that it had disciplined two officials for illegally seizing farmland, two days after it removed the party chief of Shanghai on corruption charges.
The actions, coming little more than a week before a key Chinese Communist Party meeting, have prompted speculation that President Hu Jintao is acting on a dual agenda: purging potential rivals while he attempts to quell public unrest over government corruption and impunity.
Government officials said the dismissal Monday of Chen Liangyu, a protege of former President Jiang Zemin and a member of Beijing's ruling politburo, was part of a nationwide crackdown on corruption. But analysts noted that the firing also allows Hu to reshuffle provincial leadership and position allies for key promotions in the central government.
The announcement Wednesday also may have been timed to show that Shanghai, and Chen, were not being singled out for discipline and to demonstrate that the central government is responding to rising unrest in the countryside over seizure of farmland, observers said.
The government-controlled New China News Agency said Li Xinmin, the former vice governor of Henan province, and Wang Wenchao, the former mayor of the province's capital, had been given "serious warnings" for sanctioning the seizure of almost 2,470 acres of agricultural land for a school.
Gan Yisheng, general secretary of the Communist Party's Discipline Inspection Commission, said at a news conference that the party expelled 11,071 members for graft and bribe-taking in 2005 out of a party membership of 70 million. More needs to be done to bring discipline among the ranks and to uphold the principle of clean government, he said.
As the Shanghai inquiry continues, other disciplinary action could be taken against the city's senior leaders and their relatives. Reports are spreading that security has been stepped up at Shanghai airports and that officials' passports have been confiscated to prevent potential suspects from fleeing the country.
"As our investigation progresses, we may find other people who were involved," Gan said. "No matter who is involved, we will punish them severely. We exercise zero tolerance toward the violation of regulations and laws."
Nervous Shanghai cadres quickly responded with a public show of loyalty to Beijing.
"The Shanghai municipal government and local party members and cadres all resolutely upheld the decision to investigate Chen Liangyu for his severe discipline violation," said a New China News Agency report carried by state media.
Among the big questions looming before the party plenum that begins Oct. 8 is who will replace Chen on the elite 24-member politburo. Also unresolved are the prospects of Han Zheng, mayor of Shanghai, who was appointed Monday as acting Shanghai party secretary, and Huang Ju, a former Shanghai party secretary who is a member of the powerful nine-member politburo standing committee.
"I expect eventually Han Zheng would be moved out," said Dali Yang, a China expert at the University of Chicago.
Chinese provincial leaders typically are from outside the region they are appointed to serve. Shanghai, however, long considered a fiefdom of former President Jiang, has promoted senior officials from local ranks. Reassigning Han, analysts say, would be a convenient way for the party to halt that practice.
Huang's case will be more closely watched for its political implications. Investigators in Shanghai are said to be gathering evidence against Huang's wife, a local power broker in her own right, in the pension funds scandal that felled Chen.
But Huang, a Jiang ally, is at the pinnacle of his power, and touching him could set off a political earthquake, observers say.
"To move him on grounds of anticorruption, that would be truly unprecedented," Yang said. "If Hu can clean at the very top, he would unleash a new era in terms of anticorruption and reform in China."
The more likely scenario is that Huang, 68, might retire next year for health reasons, or be moved to a ceremonial post. Huang is said to be recovering from cancer and disappeared from the public spotlight for a few months this year for treatment.
Meanwhile, Shanghai, China's biggest, wealthiest and most glamorous city, has seemingly lost some of its luster as the model of the Chinese economic miracle.
The more populist Hu administration made it clear this week that the new party plenary session would concentrate on the "harmonious society," a buzzword for balancing development, closing the wealth gap and ending favoritism for the coastal areas. Resources are being shifted to the country's impoverished inland. Previously ignored areas such as Tianjin, a municipality near Beijing, are being promoted as potential rivals to Shanghai.
But observers point out that Beijing has ample incentive to prevent the Shanghai scandal from undermining social stability and investor confidence in a city of 20 million that is home to the nation's fastest-growing concentration of middle-class residents and a favorite destination for foreign capital.
"It is not in Hu's interest, two years prior to the Olympics and four years prior to the World Expo [which Shanghai is to host], to have a bad shake-up in Shanghai," said Wenran Jiang, a China expert at the University of Alberta in Canada.
"They are going to want to send the message that there are a few bad apples in the basket, but [that] overall, China is good, Shanghai is good."