CCP meet likely to focus on fate of `Shanghai gang'

The fates of deposed Shanghai boss Chen Liangyu (陳良宇) and other political heavyweights from China's financial hub hang in the balance ahead of a closed-door meeting of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) elite.

The four-day event starting tomorrow will be held in the wake of last month's sacking of Chen, Shanghai's top politician, who was removed as party secretary over his alleged links to the misuse of the city's billion-dollar pension fund.

Chen, who was also suspended as a member of the 24-member Politburo, is expected to be a topic of feverish discussion among the 500 cadres' meeting in Beijing.

Analysts believe Chen is likely to be officially thrown out of the party and brought up on criminal charges that would almost certainly land him in jail, although this will probably not happen until after the plenum.

"Given President Hu Jintao's (胡錦濤) latest public commitment to wipe out corruption root and branch, I don't see how Chen can possibly avoid a stiff prison sentence," said Richard Baum, director of the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies.

Chen's ouster, the highest-level firing of a government official in more than a decade, comes under the banner of Hu's public pledge to combat rampant corruption among the party's rank and file.

Hu will, however, feel little urgency to move so quickly against the cornered Chen, waiting instead for the more than 100 party investigators now rifling through Shang-hai's accounts to build an air-tight case, said Wu Guoguang (吳國光), a China specialist at the University of Victoria in Canada.

With several other Chen allies ensnared, Hu's action also sets the stage for the eventual ouster of officials linked with the so-called "Shanghai gang," cadres that rose to power under the patronage of former president Jiang Zemin (江澤民).

Like previous Chinese leaders, Hu's carefully calibrated move is aimed at consolidating his power ahead of a five-yearly Communist Party Congress late next year when a new group of leaders will be appointed.

"This at minimum is seizing at an opportunity to sort of whittle away at the Shanghai crowd and send some messages that Hu is really in charge," said Ralph Cossa of the Pacific Forum CSIS, a think tank based in Hawaii.

While few observers see the kind of vicious putsch that characterized politics in former leader Mao Zedong's (毛澤東) days, officials appointed by Jiang, such as political adviser Jia Qinglin (賈慶林) and Vice Premier Huang Ju (黃菊), are in Hu's firing line, analysts said.