Security 'stepped up' at ancestral home of ex-security tsar Zhou

Security around the childhood home of former security tsar Zhou Yongkang has been tightened in the past few months, according to a media report yesterday that also revealed extensive details of Zhou's upbringing.

The report, published by the Shanghai-based Oriental Morning Post on the mobile communications platform WeChat, came as a senior executive at Zhou's former power base, the China National Petroleum Corporation, resigned from the National People's Congress.

The report said villagers last saw Zhou in person in April when he told them: "This might be my last visit to see you."

The Post reported in late August that Communist Party leaders had agreed at their secretive annual "summer meeting" at the Beidaihe seaside resort in Hebei to investigate Zhou, who had retired nine months earlier, for corruption.

Zhou had been one of the most powerful men in the mainland, and was one of nine members of the party's Politburo Standing Committee, the nation's top decision-making body.

Yesterdays' report called Zhou by his original name Zhou Yuangen. It said he had stepped down from a leadership position in 2012 and was the father of Zhou Bin, who is being investigated for graft.