Top Sichuan leader fired in tightening graft fight
Source: Agencies |
December 14, 2012, Friday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
CHINA has dismissed a top official in the southwestern province of Sichuan after putting him under investigation for "serious disciplinary violations."
Sichuan's deputy Party chief Li Chuncheng was the most senior person to be investigated since Xi Jinping became leader of the Chinese Communist Party.
Xi has vowed to crack down on corruption, warning last month that if corruption was allowed to run wild, the Party risked major unrest and collapse of its rule.
Li's downfall was unexpected and swift, coming less than a month after the Party's 18th national congress named him as a non-voting member of the Party's Central Committee.
But the timing and the target appear intended to underscore the new leadership's determination to root out corruption.
"Opposing corruption is becoming an extremely important part of Chinese politics because the Communist Party must win hearts of people that have already been fed up with the corruption of some officials," said Liu Shanying, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
"Li Chuncheng is the first ministerial level official fired after the Party congress, but he is definitely not the last one," Liu said.
Since the new Party leadership took office last month, several officials have been ousted, among them a city police chief in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region for keeping twin sisters as mistresses and a district Party secretary in Chongqing City after a video surfaced showing him having sex with a woman sent by construction company executives hoping to blackmail him.
Li, however, is suspected of corruption on a much larger scale. He is suspected of buying and selling official positions and, as a senior official in Sichuan's capital city of Chengdu and later of the province, having a hand in steering real estate development deals in return for favors.
Sichuan's deputy Party chief Li Chuncheng was the most senior person to be investigated since Xi Jinping became leader of the Chinese Communist Party.
Xi has vowed to crack down on corruption, warning last month that if corruption was allowed to run wild, the Party risked major unrest and collapse of its rule.
Li's downfall was unexpected and swift, coming less than a month after the Party's 18th national congress named him as a non-voting member of the Party's Central Committee.
But the timing and the target appear intended to underscore the new leadership's determination to root out corruption.
"Opposing corruption is becoming an extremely important part of Chinese politics because the Communist Party must win hearts of people that have already been fed up with the corruption of some officials," said Liu Shanying, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
"Li Chuncheng is the first ministerial level official fired after the Party congress, but he is definitely not the last one," Liu said.
Since the new Party leadership took office last month, several officials have been ousted, among them a city police chief in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region for keeping twin sisters as mistresses and a district Party secretary in Chongqing City after a video surfaced showing him having sex with a woman sent by construction company executives hoping to blackmail him.
Li, however, is suspected of corruption on a much larger scale. He is suspected of buying and selling official positions and, as a senior official in Sichuan's capital city of Chengdu and later of the province, having a hand in steering real estate development deals in return for favors.
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