Former Politburo Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang has been officially
expelled from the CCP and arrested.
In late July, China’s
anti-corruption crackdown officially targeted the highest-ranking Chinese
Communist Party member ever: Zhou Yongkang, formerly a Politburo Standing Committee member
and the head of China’s internal security apparatus. In July, Zhou was formally
placed under Party investigation for “serious disciplinary violations.” On
Friday, the CCP announced that it has officially expelled Zhou for his
crimes and has turned his case over to the legal system for investigation and
eventual prosecution.
In the
Chinese system, Party members are first investigated internally by the Central
Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI). The bulk of the investigation
takes place in secret; once the Party publicly announces that a particular
official is under investigation, his or her fate is a foregone conclusion. Friday’s
announcement regarding Zhou, then, comes as no surprise but it does bring us
one step closer to what will surely give the Bo Xilai case some competition as
China’s “trial of the century.”
Zhou’s
case has now been turned over to the legal system, which will officially
prosecute him for the crimes uncovered by the CCDI. According to Xinhua, the
Supreme People’s Procuratorate announced in a statement that prosecutors have
already decided to arrest Zhou “according to the law.” Given China’s current
focus on the “rule of law,” Zhou’s trial is sure to be a carefully managed
showcase for the Chinese legal system, as Bo Xilai’s was, with every pretense
of legal defense. But the verdict is a foregone conclusion; the only question
is whether Zhou will escape with a prison sentence or whether (as some in China
whisper) he will be given the death penalty to serve as a warning to China’s
other “tigers.”
A
statement following the December 5 meeting of the Central Committee’s Political
Bureau, which reached the decision to expel Zhou, included a partial list of
Zhou’s crimes. The statement accused Zhou of having “seriously violated the
Party’s political, organizational and confidentiality discipline,” according to
Xinhua. In particular, Zhou was accused of accepting “huge bribes” both
personally and through his family in return for political favors. He also is
accused of setting up his contacts within China’s state-owned enterprise system
(presumably within the oil sector, where Zhou was especially influential). In a
more salacious detail, the statement claimed that Zhou kept multiple mistresses
– not a crime, but a violation of Party discipline as well as a handy way to
tarnish what little is left of the former security tsar’s image.
Perhaps
most interestingly, given Zhou’s former position as the head of China’s
domestic security affairs, Zhou also stands accused of having “leaked the
Party’s and the country’s secrets.” The investigation found that Zhou had
violated the “confidentiality discipline” of the Party, another reference to
Zhou’s alleged leaking of state secrets. What secrets Zhou leaked, and to whom,
remains a mystery.
The
official accusations against Zhou are not surprising, but are politically
important. Zhou’s fate was effectively sealed once the Party announced its
investigation into his affairs, but the process will continue to play out over
the next few months as the case moves into the trial stage. That means the CCP
will be able to boost the momentum of its overall anti-corruption campaign more
or less at will throughout the coming months by releasing well-timed
announcements about the most high-ranking official ever to be brought down for
corruption. That positive publicity will be especially important as Xi Jinping
sets his sights on cleaning up corruption in the military,
which has traditionally been mostly off-limits to such investigations. By Shannon
Tiezzi
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