Yet another top official sacked under the country's official accountability system has made a surprise comeback with an appointment to a heavyweight position.
Yu Youjun, 58, was fired as a party boss and deputy minister of the Ministry of Culture in 2008 for alleged graft. This month he was named deputy head of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project, mainland media reported on Saturday. He was stripped of his membership on the Communist Party's Central Committee and had his party membership suspended for two years by the Politburo in September 2008, a year after he was appointed. He was then implicated in at least two corruption cases.
In the 2 1/2 years since, Yu has kept a low profile and rarely appeared at public events, until the construction committee of the project announced his appointment on Saturday.
The diversion scheme is one of the country's most important infrastructure projects, designed to divert water to drought-hit northern regions. The government invested 115 billion yuan (HK$136 billion) in the project over the past eight years.
Yu, the governor of Shanxi province from 2005 to 2007, was forced to apologise publicly in June 2007 after mainland media revealed that thousands of children and mentally disabled migrant workers were locked up and forced to work as slaves in kilns in the province. Three months after his apology, Yu raised eyebrows by taking the job of deputy cultural minister.
Yu is not the only cadre forced to resign under an official accountability system only to be reinstated a few years later. His successor as governor, Meng Xuenong , was forced to step down as provincial chief in 2008 after a huge mudslide left at least 254 people dead, but he resurfaced last year as a deputy secretary of the Work Committee of the departments under the party's Central Committee.