Zhou Yongkang, former head of the Central Political and Legislative Committee, which oversees China's security forces and law enforcement institutions, has been placed under house arrest, according to Reuters.
Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered a special task force formed in late November or early December to look into several accusations brought against Zhou by political rivals, sources with ties to the leadership told Reuters, requesting anonymity to avoid repercussions for discussing secretive elite politics.
"Zhou Yongkang's freedom has been restricted. His movements have been monitored," one source said, adding that he cannot leave his Beijing home or receive guests without prior approval.
Zhou is being investigated for violating party discipline, official jargon for corruption, the sources said. They did not say what the specific allegations were.
Who is Zhou Yongkang?
Zhou joined the Communist Party in 1964. Like many future leaders (including Hu Jintao), Zhou came from an engineering background, and held several high-up positions in China's petroleum industry before using his terrifying visage to help reform China's policing system as minister for public security from 2002 to 2007, and subsequently as Central Political and Legislative Committee chair between 2007 and 2012. Zhou helped craft a more professional police force, firing several hundred officers believed to have drinking problems.
As China's top security chief, Zhou served on the 17th Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China under Hu Jintao and alongside future president Xi Jinping.
He sounds pretty untouchable, what happened?
Bo Xilai happened. Zhou was a key supporter of Bo, and when the younger man fell from grace – Bo was jailed for life in September for corruption and abuse of power – so did his mentor.
"Xi Jinping and [Premier] Li Keqiang hate Zhou Yongkang as he was the only standing committee member who opposed ousting Bo Xilai. They are gunning for Zhou," a source told Reuters.
As the Bo Xilai scandal unfolded in 2012, Zhou was linked to (almost certainly false) rumours of an attempted coup in Beijing. Regardless of whether he attempted to overthrow the government to protect his protege, Zhou's ties to Bo spelled the end of his career and any influence he planned to wield post retirement.
Following the success of the Bo Xilai trial, the Xi administration allegedly initiated a corruption investigation against Zhou in August 2013, according to the South China Morning Post. Though Reuters initially reported that Zhou was merely helping authorities with an ongoing investigation into state energy companies, and was not a target himself, this allegedly changed after Xi Jinping's much vaunted anti-corruption crackdown. Xi vowed to go after "tigers" as well as "flies" in the fight against graft.
Zhao Hongzhu, a top anti-corruption official, said in October that any person who violated party discipline or broke the law would be punished "regardless of who it involved, how much power he has or how high his position is".
What does this mean for the Communist Party?
If Zhou were to go the way of Bo Xilai, that would be another victory for the so-called 'Jiang Zemin faction' – high-ranking members of the Communist Party loyal to the former president, a group which includes Xi Jinping. The Jiang faction has seen a massive resurgence since Bo's downfall, grabbing almost every spot on the 18th Standing Committee. Only Premier Li Keqiang comes from the other major faction in the Party, centred around former president Hu Jintao, and Li's has been significantly weakened since the Third Plenum when his responsibility for the economy was greatly reduced.
Okay, so what's this about a murder?
Just as the Bo Xilai trial focused on the former Chongqing party chief's corruption and abuses of power, rather than the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood, any investigation into Zhou will centre on alleged corruption during his time in the petroleum industry, and potentially as security tzar. Like Bo however, Zhou does have some serious skeletons in his closet, and one of those is an alleged murder.
According to Boxun – an overseas Chinese community website with sources in the Communist Party but also a habit of publishing less than fully fact-checked claims – Zhou has been implicated in the death of his ex-wife. Two of Zhou's former employees have allegedly confessed to being instructed to kill Zhou's ex-wife by running her down with two cars in 2000.
The two men, both members of the People's Armed Police, were convicted and sentenced to 15 to 20 years in prison, but released after just four years, going on to high paid jobs in the petroleum industry, which was dominated at the time by Zhou and his allies.
[Image via SCMP]
0 User Comments