Chongqing comes in from the Bo Xilai cold with visit from Chinese President Xi Jinping
The southwest boomtown of Chongqing (重慶) might have put the disgrace of its former Communist Party chief behind it with President Xi Jinping (習近平) making the city the focus of his first domestic trip this year.
The trip is also expected to focus attention on Chongqing’s status as an important driver of economic growth.
In the first visit to the city by a president in more than eight years, Xi toured Guoyuan Port on Monday afternoon and was briefed on shipping and rail transport, according to state-run Xinhua’s social media account. “[The port] has great prospects,” Xi was quoted as saying.
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Xi later visited a factory operated by Beijing Orient Electronics, the country’s biggest maker of semiconductor display devices.
Chongqing is one of China’s four municipalities but it has been a long time between presidential visits. “Where the top party leader goes and where he doesn’t go has important symbolic meaning,” said Chen Daoyin, a political scientist at Shanghai University of Political Science and Law. “This trip is recognition for the new leadership in Chongqing.”
Xinhua showed photos of Chongqing party boss Sun Zhengcai (孫政才) and Mayor Huang Qifan accompanying Xi on the visit. Both are seen as front runners for promotion in the next major personnel reshuffle.
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“The power transition of the 19th party congress [due in 2017] is coming and Xi doesn’t seem to mind promoting people from other camps,” Beijing-based political observer Zhang Lifan said.
Chen said the trip could also mean that Chongqing had “turned over the page of Bo Xilai”, the former Chongqing party boss who was jailed for corruption in 2013. Former president Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) was the last president to visit, touring in 2007, months before then-rising star Bo took over as its party secretary.
Bo raised eyebrows with campaigns to promote revolutionary songs and crack down on crime. Critics said the songs raised the spectre of the Cultural Revolution and the get-tough approach on crime involved serious infringements of the law. But the campaigns received national endorsement, including from then-vice-president Xi, who visited Chongqing in a show of support.
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On the sidelines of the National People’s Congress in 2012, Bo said Hu attached great importance to Chongqing, and Hu would “surely come to visit”. But Hu never did make a trip under Bo’s rule, and Bo was sacked after the NPC session ended.
Zhang said Xi’s visit on Monday could be “a declaration of authority over the former power base of his former rival”.
Zhang said there were also economic implications to the trip.
“The country’s economy is sliding but Chongqing seems to be an exception … Bo laid the foundations for the growth. He brought in a lot of international companies when he ruled Chongqing,” he said.
Chongqing was the fastest-growing provincial-level area in 2014 and the first half of 2015, according to official statistics.
Both sites Xi visited on Monday started operating in 2013, well after Bo’s fall from grace.
