China Briefing | Sudden fall of political star rearranges chess pieces of China’s ruling elite
The removal of Chongqing’s secretary Sun Zhengcai comes right before a key meeting of top Communist Party officials as President Xi Jinping works to upend longstanding succession traditions
With the benefit of hindsight, the first ominous sign for Sun Zhengcai – once a contender for China’s top leadership in a landmark reshuffle scheduled for the autumn until he was unceremoniously put under investigation last Monday – emerged in February.
Then, the head of the central government’s anti-corruption task force, which just finished its second round of inspection of Chongqing’s party officials on issues of corruption and loyalty to the Communist Party leadership, told Sun, then the party secretary, that Chonqing had not done enough to eradicate the “toxic” influence of Bo Xilai, his predecessor.
How even as ‘the core’, Xi faces resistance from China’s local officials
Another bad omen arose in April when He Ting, Chongqing’s police chief, and Mu Huaping, a vice mayor, vanished from the public view, presumably taken away for questioning by the country’s top anti-graft watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI). Both He and Mu were known to be very close to Sun. Their investigation fit a longstanding pattern in which CCDI first questions close allies of a senior official to gather evidence before going after the official concerned.