[The purge has also targeted several top officials who had the potential to undermine Mr. Xi’s authority. Along with Mr. Sun, Mr. Liu named Bo Xilai, a former party secretary of the southwestern megacity of Chongqing; Zhou Yongkang, the former security czar; Ling Jihua, a top aide to former President Hu Jintao; and the former generals Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong.]
By
Austin Ramzy
Sun
Zhengcai, then the Communist party secretary of the city of Chongqing,
in Beijing in March. Credit Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press |
HONG
KONG — A rising Chinese
politician who was abruptly removed from office this summer was publicly
accused Thursday of trying to seize control of the Communist Party.
The accusation against the politician, Sun
Zhengcai, was made by an economic official during a session of the Communist
Party congress in Beijing, and gives the most specific detail to date of the
charges against Mr. Sun.
Mr. Sun had previously been accused of “grave
violations of discipline,” a vague phrase that can include corruption or
disloyalty to the party. But the accusation that he had plotted a political
overthrow represents a personalization of the allegations: Rather than
attempting to undermine the party, he is accused of transgressions against
China’s leader, Xi Jinping.
Liu Shiyu, chairman of the China Securities
Regulatory Commission, grouped Mr. Sun with a handful of high-level officials
who have been toppled in recent years. He called them “figures in important and
high places who were both corrupted and contrived to usurp the leadership of
the party and seize power.”
“These cases are appalling,” Mr. Liu added.
Defining their crimes as offenses not just
against the law and the Communist Party but an attempt to oust Mr. Xi himself
is a noteworthy shift, analysts say. And making such a statement during the
party congress sends a clear message to officials.
“Anyone challenging Xi Jinping can now be
seen as committing a political crime,” said Nicholas Bequelin, East Asia
regional director for Amnesty International. “I think that is very different
from what everybody understood before — that yes, if you were resisting,
opposing or going through bureaucratic strategies to get around new directions
you could be taken down by a number of accusations, including corruption or a
serious breach of discipline, but not accused of something that is far more
serious, which is a political plot.”
Mr. Xi opened the twice-a-decade party
congress on Wednesday with a 205-minute speech that outlined his vision of a
country resuming its position of world leadership while facing continuing
threats to the primacy of the Communist Party at home.
Next week a new lineup of the Politburo
Standing Committee will be unveiled. While the exact makeup is not known, the
new standing committee, which is the top echelon of political power in China,
will further cement Mr. Xi’s control.
Under Mr. Xi, the party has carried out an
extensive crackdown on corruption that has seen more than 1.5 million officials
investigated in the past five years, including 440 at the provincial level or
above.
The purge has also targeted several top
officials who had the potential to undermine Mr. Xi’s authority. Along with Mr.
Sun, Mr. Liu named Bo Xilai, a former party secretary of the southwestern
megacity of Chongqing; Zhou Yongkang, the former security czar; Ling Jihua, a
top aide to former President Hu Jintao; and the former generals Xu Caihou and
Guo Boxiong.
He said that by removing these men, Mr. Xi,
“with his tenacious will, strong sense of responsibility and extraordinary
political wisdom, resolutely and comprehensively enforced strict party
discipline, solved the problem that severely threatens the governance base and
ability of the party.”
Mr. Sun had been party secretary of
Chongqing, a city of 30 million where he was sent in 2012 to help clean up one
of the country’s biggest political scandals, the fall of Mr. Bo and his top
deputy, Wang Lijun, who had been police chief there. Mr. Sun was seen as a
possible candidate for elevation to the Politburo Standing Committee, at the
party congress underway.
But in February he was criticized in a party
inspector’s report as having failed to fully stamp out the legacy of Mr. Bo,
who was purged for corruption, abuse of power and a murder committed by his
wife, Gu Kailai.
Mr. Sun was apologetic after the report and
resolved to strengthen his efforts to wipe out the legacy of Mr. Bo, who had
been a popular figure in Chongqing. But he disappeared from public view on July
15, just days after pledging his loyalty to Mr. Xi.
Chen Min’er, a close ally of Mr. Xi who
succeeded Mr. Sun in Chongqing, said Thursday that the decision to remove Mr.
Sun was “completely right, very wise and timely.”
He pledged to “comprehensively and thoroughly
remove the bad influence of Sun Zhengcai and the leftover poison of the
thoughts of Bo and Wang.”
One of the accusations against Mr. Sun —
trying to “usurp the leadership of the party and seize power” — has historical
significance from a high-profile purge that followed the death of Mao Zedong.
It was used against the Gang of Four, the officials, including Mao’s last wife,
who were arrested in 1976 and blamed for the excesses of the Cultural
Revolution.
Ailin Tang contributed research from Beijing.