The future of Chongqing's mayor appears to be up in the air in the wake of political turmoil in the southwestern municipality last week.
Huang Qifan, a close ally of the municipality's party boss, Bo Xilai, faces uncertain career prospects after reportedly being summoned to Beijing to explain why he led a convoy of armed police and police vehicles to besiege the US consulate in Chengdu on Tuesday in apparent pursuit of his deputy mayor, Wang Lijun, who used to be Bo's right-hand man.
Three separate sources in Chongqing confirmed that Huang took the armed police 300 kilometres from Chongqing to the consulate area of Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan province, in pursuit of Wang, who requested a meeting with US diplomats and remained holed up in the consulate for a day.
The sources, who declined to be identified, said Huang was summoned to Beijing on Friday. Whom Huang met remains unclear, though speculation has been rife that he was asked by central authorities to explain why he led the police to besiege the US diplomatic unit, and why the municipal government made the decision to place Wang under what it said via microblog was 'vacation-style treatment' - a phrase that has since been widely commented on by mainland web users.
The dramatic political storm looks set to cast a pall over Huang's otherwise bright political future, analysts said, even though he might have been simply taking orders from his boss, Bo. Huang, 59, has been widely considered a rising political star, and one likely to be promoted after the Communist Party's leadership reshuffle this autumn.
Johnny Lau Yui-siu, a Hong Kong-based China watcher, speculated that Huang's political prospects might be less up to him at this point and more the result of 'bargaining between Bo and top leaders in Beijing'. 'If Bo agrees to make some compromises in the power struggle, I believe Huang will have the chance to get promoted, too,' Lau said.