'Petroleum gang' star held wide sway
The Communist Party's decision to expel Zhou Yongkang and hand him over to prosecutors has almost certainly put an end to his career, which extended across the most influential sectors of modern China.
The Communist Party's decision to expel Zhou Yongkang and hand him over to prosecutors has almost certainly put an end to his career, which extended across the most influential sectors of modern China - oil, land and the national police apparatus.
Zhou was born in 1942 in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, and studied oil exploration at the Beijing Petroleum Institute, graduating in 1966. He joined a geology team scouting for wells in Heilongjiang' s Daqing Field, which was then just starting production.
He remained in the industry, working in exploration and surveying, eventually becoming part of the "petroleum gang" - top officials who began their professional lives in the business.
In 1985, Zhou was named vice-minister of the Petroleum Industry and stayed there until it was disbanded by the central government, who renamed it the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) in 1988.
Over the next decade, he rose through the ranks of the corporation to become general manager, in addition to being the party's top man at the company, before leaving in 1998.
Zhou was tapped to head the Ministry of Land Resources, and the following year was named party secretary of Sichuan , a post he held until 2002. The resource-rich province would eventually become the power base for Zhou and his family.
His son, Zhou Bin, owns an investment company and a hydraulic firm there. He was detained last December, sources said earlier.
Widely referred to as a Jiang Zemin protege, Zhou was elected to the 25-member Politburo in 2002. He was appointed to the powerful post of minister of public security in 2002, and the Politburo Standing Committee in 2007, before retiring in 2012.
His 10 years overseeing security coincided with Beijing's hosting of the Olympics, which saw some overseas visitors complain about delays owing to security checkpoints, but the event concluded without any significant disruptions. Within the public security world, Zhou was credited with streamlining the police.
Zhou also showed he could be ruthless in dealing with external threats to the party.
His ministry tightened its grip on Falun Gong, ethnic groups and rights activists and other "subversive forces".
