Former top leader Zhou Yongkang returns to limelight amid corruption speculation

A former member of the Communist Party's all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee is back in the limelight for the first time since retiring in November.

State media recently reported on Zhou Yongkang's not-so-recent trip to his alma mater earlier this year - publicity that analysts suspect was aimed at dispelling speculation of corruption surrounding the nation's former security tsar.

Several of Zhou's former aides or close associates have been implicated in corruption or placed under Communist Party disciplinary investigation amid a stepped-up graft crackdown launched by the new administration under the leadership of President Xi Jinping .

Escorted by top officials in Jiangsu, including party secretary Luo Zhijun and Governor Li Xueyong, Zhou visited the Suzhou Middle School on April 29.

However, the trip was not widely known until recently, when media outlets began reporting on it, citing a news release dated May 27 on the school's official website. Now 70, Zhou entered the elite school in 1958.

Speculation about whether Zhou would be implicated for graft intensified last week when a former vice-governor of Sichuan , Guo Yongxiang , was put under investigation by party disciplinary officials for "serious violations of party discipline" - a common euphemism for corruption.