Here’s another story that’s not getting much attention here for reasons that aren’t completely clear to me. The top official of the Communist Party in Shanghai has been removed from his job:
SHANGHAI (AFP) – Sacked Shanghai Communist Party supremo Chen Liangyu presided over roaring economic growth in China’s commercial hub but his political loyalties and refusal to follow orders from Beijing may have cost him his career.
A cadre [ed. presumably “cadre memberâ€] since 1980, the former architecture major became Shanghai’s Communist Party chief in late 2002, following a short tenure as mayor of the city that began a year earlier.
Chen’s political career, which was exclusively in the eastern port city, ended abruptly Monday when he was sacked for his alleged links to the illicit use of hundreds of millions of dollars from Shanghai’s pension fund.
State-controlled Xinhua news agency said the central government in Beijing had dismissed Chen, 60, from his Shanghai post and suspended him from the central politburo, the ruling clique of Communist leaders.
A fall from grace of an official this prominent is an earthquake, a tsunami. The official reason for the dismissal is corruption but I can’t help but wonder if it’s more due to Chen’s loyalty to his predecessor in the job, Zhang Zemin.
Elite Chinese Politics and Political Economy wonders what’s next:
So now what? The main question of course is whether they will go after Huang Ju or his wife, who by many accounts is deeply involved in siphoning social security funds as the vice chair-woman of the Shanghai Charity Trust. I tend to agree with those who say that the bucks will stop at Chen Liangyu, but then I thought that it would stop at Qin Yu. There was a rumor from a few months ago about the disappearance of Huang Ju having more to do with his wife’s corruption problems than with his own illness. Perhaps there is some truth to the matter. Perhaps the bargain between Jiang and Hu was that Huang Ju would stay in the Politburo Standing Committee until next fall while Chen Liangyu is sacrificed. Soon after Huang Ju’s return from his “illness,” the CDIC began to investigate the Shanghai case. There is some sign that Huang Ju is nervous though. Just two days before Chen’s arrest, Huang attended a forum on social security, where he urged speedy building up of the social security system…….
